Amygdala
by CrimsonCobwebs
Summary: Stuck in a cabin in the middle of Trabia. It's enough to drive a person insane, if said person wasn't already insane. Weekly updates.
1. Chapter 1

_Psst, you want some crack? Yeah, you do. I gotcha sorted. Here's some couple-crack with a gram of crazy. You're welcome._

* * *

**AMYGDALA  
**_CHAPTER ONE_

He counted the bricks on the wall.

From a distance they looked uniform, but up close no two were the same; pock marked, misaligned, different shades. Some bore the stains of those before him, others who must have stood in this very spot and pondered their death. Had they counted the bricks? Probably not. They probably thought about things like family and regret.

He didn't think of either of those things. How could he, when he had none?

Well, maybe he'd had a family once. Definitely friends. Admirers. Lovers. But he'd thrown them all away to pursue his glorious dreams, and those dreams were far greater than anything as mundane as family.

To be remembered, maybe that had been the goal. Not another faceless soldier in a uniform, another number logged into a database. No, not for him. It was in his blood to be something greater. He would be more than the brick, the wall, the builder; he would be the architect.

But his plans – his dreams – had fallen into ruin.

Could he have run forever? Maybe. He'd always been running, in a way. For a long time he thought he'd been running towards something, pursuing a goal that was always tantalising out of reach: SeeD, romance, success, knighthood. But now he wondered if he had just been running for the sake of running. Running to find a way to fill the emptiness, an emptiness that had been with him longer than he could remember. Even realising his ultimate dream hadn't filled it, and now he was emptier than ever.

Ah. There was the regret.

He faced the wall and listened to a judge list off crimes committed, felt the heavy anti-magic cuffs around his wrists and ankles, and heard the clack of the safety being pulled back on the gun pointed at his head.

Today, Seifer Almasy turned twenty-three years old.

Today, he accepted retribution.

He was done counting bricks.

* * *

**One day earlier**

Selphie restlessly bounced her knee and stabbed a finger onto the blueprints of this year's Garden Festival.

"See? The stage needs to go here, so we have to move the ammunition storage. Maybe to the Training Center? There's so much room there and we never use it."

"The damp and humidity won't do the ammunition any good," Squall said, not bothering to look up from the paperwork he was signing. "We're not moving things around for a stage. You already have two. Why do you need a third?"

"Because it's a _festival_!" Selphie declared, waving her arms. "You can't have just, like, _two_ stages. You know Trabia's Winter Festival has six. _Six!_ We're an embarrassment."

Squall said nothing. His attention was focused solely on the papers in front of him. Financial reports that had boring things on them like graphs and statistics. Ick.

Selphie slammed her hand down on the stack of paper, earning herself a very mild look from Squall.

"This is _very important_," she said. "Will you please let me move the storage somewhere else so we can have the Country and Folk stage? The students demand diversity this year. They _demand_ it, Squall. Do you know what that's like? Having people demand things from you all the time?"

Squall stared at her flatly.

"We can't just do pop and rock again," Selphie continued. "I mean, I don't have anything against the Pink PomPoms and the Thrashers, but we've had them three years in a row and I just cannot – WILL NOT – put the Balamb orchestra on the stage to play rock covers again. Like, no offence to them, but they're kinda lame. We need electric guitars, booming bass, strobe lighting and – and lazers! Pew-pew!" She made finger guns to demonstrate her point and in the process sent Squall's neat pile of paperwork fluttering to the floor.

They both stared at the mess for an unreadable moment, then Squall sighed and put down his pen.

"You can move them into the unoccupied dorms in 1-B on the condition you leave me alone for the rest of the afternoon."

"Yaaaaaay! Thanks Squall! You're the best Garden Festival Committee member ever!"

"No lasers."

"Oh-kay! Gotcha! No lasers!"

"I mean it, Selphie."

Selphie edged out the door with her blueprints in hand, grinning wildly. "Uh-huh, yep, no pointy light beams, got it, totally, 100% - " She shut the door of Squall's office and did a twirl in the corridor and a happy-jig for good measure.

Three stages! Three different music themes! Strobe lighting! _Lasers_! This was going to be the best. Festival. Ever!

She danced her way to the Quad, determined to finalise the stage setup and check whether the extension leads were long enough to connect them to the outlets. She still had to submit the measurements to the rental company in Fisherman's Horizon and as it would take them a few weeks to process the order she needed to get on that lickity split.

She pulled out her to do list and crossed off 'Hassle Squall' with a wonky pencil line. It didn't make much of a dent in the list, though. So much to do and so few volunteers this year. Many cadets were in Esthar killing moon monsters (Selphie had recently got back from being stationed there herself for a few months) while a sudden influx of new recruits following the dissolution of Galbadia's elite force meant others were kept busy.

She didn't mind, though. Organising the Garden Festival kept her mind occupied.

_Gotta stay occupied. Gotta stay busy._

She stopped in her tracks_._

_I… I don't have to stay busy, right? I can totally have down time whenever I want! Like, this is technically my vacation allowance! _She looked down at the Garden Festival notes in her hand._ I can… I can totally take down time. Totally._

Her eyes trailed to the luminous lights that striped Garden's vaulted ceiling. She thought she could hear them buzzing, a low pulse in her mind, vibrating in her ears, humming, humming. Too loud. Her breath caught in her chest and squeezed her lungs.

Oppressive.

"Hey, Sefie, why so glum?"

Selphie startled. Irvine had managed to sneak up on her, and probably intentionally judging by the smarmy grin on his face. She slapped him in feigned-irritation.

"Don't be creepy! I'm just thinkin' about the Garden Festival!"

"You're always thinkin' about the Garden Festival," Irvine chided. "Why don't you think about something else for a change?"

"Like what?"

"Me."

Selphie rolled her eyes but indulged his poor humour and threaded her arm through his. "Escort a lady to the Cafeteria would you? I hear they're servin' sticky toffee pudding!"

Irvine tipped his hat. "You know you're meant to eat dessert last, right?"

"Where's the fun in that? Anyway, I've just decided I'm takin' a break! Doctor Kadowaki said –" She caught herself and threw a guilty glance at Irvine. Ah well. No use covering her tracks. "She said I should take it easy. You know. After fightin' in Esthar. Gotta keep these bones healthy and all that!"

He looked at her sideways. "That all she say?"

"Oh yeah, she did say another thing…" Selphie said ponderously. "She said I… I should… Eat three portions of sticky toffee pudding without people shaming me. She said that's really important. For my health."

Irvine snorted a laugh. "If that's what the doctor ordered then that's what it'll be."

The cafeteria was quiet during the lull between lunch and dinner. The homely clang of kitchen utensils was underlined by the smell of fried hotdogs, and for a dizzying moment Selfie was struck by nostalgia. She shook it off and hopped over to the counter.

"Three sticky toffee puddings please!"

Dorothy, the nice cafeteria lady with greying hair, gave a knowing smile. It was actually against Garden rules to give more than one serving per cadet, but Selphie volunteered to peel potatoes and scrub the underside of the cooker once a week, so she generally got what she wanted. Plus, it was hard to say no to Selphie. It was as if Hyne Himself designed her especially for the art of cajoling; she was a blend of ferocious tenacity and saccharine sweetness applied to a face so dollish it looked almost artificial. Ignoring her was to risk seeing the crazy under all that gusty charm, and Selphie's crazy would send a psychopath running.

Dorothy placed three plastic containers of sticky cake onto her tray, then with a wink and a sly, "Don't tell Headmistress Xu," she slipped her an extra jar of toffee sauce.

Selphie tapped her nose, then skipped away with such vigour Irvine had to grab the jar to stop it from toppling over. She made for their usual spot, but a tingling brush against her skin made her look left, far left, to a dimly lit corner. It was magic, familiar magic, which was odd considering magic use was prohibited within the Cafeteria –

Rinoa. Of course. The only person who couldn't help but use magic. She'd cast some kind of deflective spell, a ward of sorts. Completely harmless, but it worked to subtly divert attention. A person would see her, then suddenly turn their head and continue past, their thoughts inexplicably drawn to another point, Rinoa forgotten.

Except, that didn't work on Selphie. Maybe because Selphie was a magic expert whose Limit Break could rival any sorceress, or maybe because Rinoa just didn't have the heart to cast magic on her friends.

"Hey, Rinny!" Selphie chimed as she bounced over to her table. "Can we sit?"

Rinoa's hair was swept back from her face in an uncharacteristic ponytail. She was frowning, lips tightly pursed, but the expression evaporated when she saw Selphie, and she pushed aside the mountain of books occupying the table top to make room for them. "Hey, guys! Oh – ah. Sorry for the – you know. Magic. I was trying to concentrate and it's hard when people are… staring."

Right. Because not many people wanted to talk to Rinoa. As the Commander's girlfriend and fledgling sorceress, she was a walking conflict of interests for SeeD. It didn't help that she was disarming, forthright and pretty; a concoction that worked to charm even the most stubborn, withdrawn, monosyllabic, leather-clad of men, much less SeeD.

"It's 'cause you're cute," Selphie told her blithely. "Right, Irvy?"

Irvine tipped his hat at her and straddled a seat. He had a plate of fries that he offered to Rinoa, who declined. She looked at Selphie's plate of cake and the obscene amount of toffee sauce she was drowning them in, and politely said nothing.

_A true friend,_ Selphie acknowledged. "You okay, Rinny? You look sorta stressed."

"Oh. Well. It's… hard to explain."

"Sorceress stuff?"

"…Yeah." Her tone oozed reluctance. "Just…. I…. Ehhh. If I try to explain, don't judge me, okay?"

Selphie lowered her fork to level her with a very serious look. "Never."

"The power inside me is really old," Rinoa began. "It's passed down from sorceress to sorceress. I don't know how many generations old mine is… I mean, maybe it's all right from the beginning? From Hyne? I'm sure it could be traced back. Anyway, I've recently discovered that… sometimes randomly or with concentration… I can access old knowledge. The knowledge of sorceresses. There's a word for it, in Visque, the Old Tongue. It's called kognita."

"You learnt that from these books?" Irvine asked.

Rinoa shook her head. "I just knew. Somehow. I know things, sometimes. I mean, it's mostly useless stuff but -"

"Kognita," Selphie clarified.

"Yeah. I'm not like, super knowledgeable or anything. But sometimes random info just pops into my brain and I know it's from the power, from the ones before me."

Selphie slowly chewed her cake. "Well, that's not a bad thing right? You could be super brainy! You could even beat Quistis in a pop quiz!" She gasped and leaned forward. "We should totally arrange a show-down, that it would be so epiiiic!"

Rinoa chuckled, but it was listless. "Recently it's like the kognita is trying to tell me something. Something that delves beyond this plane of existence, something very old and sacred to Hyne and the Old Sorceresses. Something… unfinished? Maybe?" She pushed the air around with her fingers, searching for the words. "It's like… like when you know you have something to do but you can't remember what, and it's bugging you. You know? Don't get me wrong, it's not like my powers are sentient. But they're a part of me now and I feel like maybe I have some kind of responsibility…."

Selphie sucked the last of the sauce off her spoon, frowning. Rinoa was her best friend and it was frustrating to see her going through these issues. Sometimes she just wanted to cut her open and scrape out all the power then sew her back together again. Was that a thing? Could that be a thing?

"You should go see Edea," Irvine suggested. "Even though she isn't a sorceress anymore, she was one for years and years. She might know what you mean and maybe even what it is that you have to do."

Selphie perked up and elbowed him. "Yeaah! Awesome idea, Irvy! Waaay better than what I was planning. Your plan doesn't have surgery. And we can go to the Orphanage! I haven't seen it since it reopened."

Rinoa looked less enthusiastic, but acquiesced with a nod. "These books aren't getting me anywhere and Squall hasn't been able to help either."

"It's a plan!" Selphie declared as she leapt up, toppling her seat backwards. "Woohoo!"

"I thought Doctor Kadowaki told ya to take it easy?" Irvine said a touch disapprovingly. "Isn't this your vacation time?"

"How I choose to spend my vacation is up to me," Selphie told him tartly. "I choose to spend it with Rinny. You can come too, I guess." She stuck her tongue out at him and he winked at her.

The sound of the intercom cut through the cafeteria din and the student body fell silent. There was an odd shuffling on the other end of the mic, almost as though someone was flustered and grappling with paperwork, then Xu's voice came through, unusually harried but still sharp and commanding as ever.

"Kinneas, Tilmitt and Dincht to the Commander's office immediately. I repeat, Kinneas, Tilmitt and Dincht to the Commander's office immediately. Squall, this is not -" The intercom cut out.

The three shared raised-eyebrow looks at one another. Rinoa bobbed a shoulder. "Must be SeeD stuff."

"Weird though," Selphie said.

Irvine said, "I mean, Xu doesn't exactly like Rinoa being here, that's no secret –"

"Still, it's a bit rude. She's an honorary member of the Orphanage Gang and –"

"You should just tag along anyway. You can be my plus one –"

Rinoa held up her hands. "Honestly, it's fine. Squall will tell me later anyways. He's… upset about something." Her eyes became distant. Selphie knew that look by now. It meant they were doing that weird sorceress-knight mind-talk. "I mean, he's not telling me now. But he will… Must be important. You guys should go."

Selphie brandished her spoon. "Fear not, we shall return!"

Rinoa smiled and dismissed them with a wave, an old Galbadian princess habit she hadn't yet kicked.

"Weird, right?" Irvine said as they made their way to the elevator. "You think it's bad? Xu doesn't get flustered easily."

"Maybe she's fallen for Squall's natural charms."

"Pfft."

"Hey! Squall can be very charming when he wants to be!"

When they arrived Squall's office gave the impression of disarray. Quistis was already there, standing in heated debate with Xu across Squall's long office table. Squall's computer screen was showing static, as though a vidcall had been abruptly cut short, and the commander himself was gripping a fresh cup of black coffee and looking decidedly unamused at the two women bickering in front of his desk.

"Ladies, ladies," Irvine said as he waved his hands in a pacifying manner. "Arguing never solves anything."

"Can it, Kinneas," Xu sniped. "None of you should be involved. This is between the Commander, Deputy-Head Mistress and I. Even Elite SeeDs should not be involved in this level of delicate politics, especially –"

"They're not just Elite SeeDs," Quistis argued. "The politics are not so black and white and their counsel on the matter is valued –"

"Emotional counsel," Xu said shortly. "This is a situation where emotions need to be banked so we can consider the facts. Don't you agree, Commander?"

Squall peered at them over the brim of his cup, then rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

Xu threw up her hands. "Thank you for that helpful input, Squall. Remind me to memo Cid thanking him once again for selecting such an articulate cadet to speak on behalf of Garden."

Selphie waved her hands. "Um, hellllo? Did you call us so we could referee a cat fight or something?"

"If there's bikini wrestling involved I would totally be down for that," Irvine added.

The elevator beeped and Zell walked in, looking flushed and wearing sweatpants and a hoody. "Yo, sorry. Was in the Training Centre. What's up?" He glanced around the room. "Why's everyone lookin' mad?" His expression became dark and he clenched his fists. "Is it Galbadia? Are they invading somewhere? An assassination?"

"No, Zell," Quistis cut him off before he started punching the air. "It's, ah, well. Commander?"

Squall lowered his coffee. "We just received word from our espionage team that Galbadia has captured Seifer Almasy and have sanctioned his execution 13 hours from now." He waited for the exclamations to die down before continuing. "I suspect they've had him in custody for longer, but chose to withhold the information from Garden."

Selphie waved her hands. "Hey! Isn't that against some kind of rules or something? They can't do that! Right?"

Quistis shrugged. "Seifer ostracised himself from Garden. He's no longer enrolled and it's doubtful he will ever return, much less use Garden as leverage. Seifer is wanted for war crimes in numerous countries. Galbadia have every right to detain him and… exact punishment."

"But he fought _with_ Galbadia!"

"The Galbadian government is keen to disassociate itself from the events in the war," Xu said. "They're pinning all the blame on the sorceress and her dictatorial rule. They doubtlessly think that executing Seifer would further shift the responsibility away from the state and regain the faith of neighbouring powers, such as Esthar. To keep him alive would not benefit them in the slightest."

The room went quiet, each person mulling over their opinions.

At length, Zell said, "Is it for real this time? Like, before we were told he was executed but he wasn't and he turned up on a frickin' festival float! He's not headlining this year's Garden Festival or something?"

"It's legit this time," Xu confirmed. "We've seen footage of him in the prison cell. He's chained and roughed up. Galbadia must have spent a lot of resources hunting him down, so it was only a matter of time, especially considering _other_ forces weren't looking particularly hard." Here she threw a flinty look Squall's way, who turned it aside indifferently.

He said, "I summoned you here because… I wanted you to know I petitioned to have him released to Garden under the pretence that he is still a cadet and therefore should be detained by us. The request was denied. I then demanded a trial wherein he would be represented by Garden's lawyers but… they claim he has already had a trial and has been found guilty. I don't know how true that is, but the paperwork is all there so…" Squall shrugged. "Garden can't act independently against Galbadia."

"Absolutely not," Xu agreed.

Squall went on with the faintest note of reluctance in his voice. "Garden has become a respected seat of power around the world but we must stay politically neutral. To act independently would imply that we've become a state of sorts. A political power, and one with unmatched weaponry. Garden must never become that. Without a contract…"

"You're saying that… we have to leave him," Quistis said.

Squall hesitated, eyes flitting downward for a moment. "…Yes. And I… guess I wanted you all to know first. Because… I dunno. He was…"

"Part of the Orphanage Gang," Selphie finished.

"I mean… I guess he kinda… deserves it?" Zell suggested awkwardly. Then his shoulders slumped and he shook his head. "Aw, man. This sucks. I don't like the guy and what he did in the war was…"

"But, like, it wasn't totally him, right?" Irvine said. "It was Ultimecia messing with his mind."

Squall rested a hand on his hip and looked to the side. "Maybe."

Selphie bit her lip and stared at the ground. Seifer had been behind the destruction of Trabia. Her home, hundreds of Trabian Cadets, some as young as five years old. She thought of the burnt husk of her Garden, the charred smell that mingled with pine and dirt, and the graves. So many graves. The teddies, the necklaces, the clothing, the books and photos that stood guard over fresh mounds of snow dusted soil. She was haunted by what their final moments must have been like – dreamt of it sometimes. If things had been different, maybe she would have been there instead. A distant whistle, then the incoming roar, then fire, burning, and darkness.

"He can't die," she whispered. Then louder, head snapping up: "He can't die! I gotta break his nose! For Trabia!"

The others looked at her. Irvine delicately said, "I guess we all deserve to throw a punch, hey?"

"We should totally storm the place!" Selphie said, with a determined fist pump. "We've got the manpower and GFs. Take 'em by surprise!"

"We're not risking lives, SeeD's reputation and world peace over Seifer Almasy," Xu spat. "Or anyone, for that matter."

"What if it was Rinoa?" Quistis said to Squall.

He looked momentarily perturbed, then shrugged. "He isn't Rinoa. If there was a simple solution… If it really was as simple as storming Galbadia Prison… But it isn't. Also I think…." He hesitated.

Quistis crossed her arms and said in a soft, coaxing tone, "Yes, Squall?"

He looked up. "I don't think he was caught. I think he's given up. Evading Galbadia would be easy for him with his training. He's done it now for five years. Even if they had caught him by surprise, it's unlikely they would fare well in a fight against him, especially if Raijin and Fujin were there. We only got the better of him because of our GFs and him being outnumbered."

"You're saying he wanted to be caught?" Zell asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. At any rate, do you think he'd accept our help?"

"He's too proud," Quistis acquiesced. "He always did everything on his own terms…"

A heavy silence fell over the room. Even Selphie was oddly still, hands clasped behind her back, staring at the ground. It felt like a funeral. Maybe it was. She tried to remember something good about Seifer, felt she should say something, anything. But it felt wrong and the words clogged in her throat. Her memories were too hazy anyway.

Eventually, Squall said, "I'm telling Rinoa separately because… well. You know how she is. And Edea…" He hesitated again, then saluted. "You're dismissed."

* * *

Selphie's fingers hovered over her personalog. The cursor bar flashed, daring her to write. So far she had written the date. She had changed the font three times. She had started writing then erased it six times. She had tried to write about her banal day of festival planning, but it seemed dishonest. Maybe she could skip a day of her diary?

Maybe.

She leaned back into the mountain of cushions on her bed. Her feet danced to a tune only they could hear. Idly, she flicked through past logs. Days, weeks, months, years. All her memories recorded in an attempt to fortify what the GFs destroyed. Some she uploaded to the Garden Database, others she kept personal. Very few though. She felt the student body needed some flavour of truth and emotion in their daily lives, especially in an occupation that worked to numb them.

Back and back. Back to beginning. Before the war. Before her life was turned upside down.

She read the first entry curiously. She had forgotten what she'd written. Odd how the words seemed that of a stranger's. Her words seemed so contrived, or maybe she'd just been naïve.

She stopped reading mid-sentence and looked at the date of the entry. Just after she made SeeD. Her eyes trailed over the words.

'**Oh yeah… That squad leader actually congratulated us. Seems like a nice guy. He's famous at this academy, right? If he joins the Garden Festival Committee maybe he could do the recruiting? Well, good luck with the next field exam, Seifer!'**

That's right. He _had_ congratulated them. By the way people had talked, she'd expected him to be too embittered, too proud and furious to do anything as banal as extend his felicitations. He'd failed the exam so many times, and now the boy he had bullied and his greatest rival in combat had surpassed him.

When she'd first transferred to B-Garden she had made it her mission to gather intel on the cadets (gossip, some might call it), and his was a name that popped up frequently. The girls spoke of him with flushed cheeks or bitter scorn (having been turned down at some point), and the boys spoke of him with awe, respect, or rolled eyes and a: 'Oh, _him'_.

When she saw him for the first time, she'd recognised him by reputation alone; tall and golden, swathed in heady confidence. He'd breezed past her in the corridor with his curious and intimidating posse, then stopped long enough to ask her if she was the latest transfer from Trabia.

"Anyone gives you any trouble, come see me."

He hadn't waited for her reply. Just prowled away.

Weirdo.

Weirder still that neither or them had remembered the years spent playing underneath the scorching sun by the sea, a lighthouse blinking through the summer haze, bare feet kicking soft sand. If she strained really hard, closed her eyes and hunted through the empty hollows of her memory, she thought she saw him as a child: tanned, bright eyed, dirty, with a quick grin and rough hands. She'd liked him, back then. Back before he had gone coo-coo.

"I gotta ask him why he did it!" Selphie declared to her room. "And like, it's totally unfair! There's gotta be some way…"

"There is."

Selphie didn't jump (that had been conditioned out her as a child), but she did throw a baffled look at the swathe of shadows lurking just beyond the lamplight. There stood Rinoa, having appeared from absolutely nowhere, arms crossed and dressed in black leggings and a dark blue sweater.

"Hey, Rinny," Selphie said. "I didn't know you could, um… teleport."

Rinoa stepped into the circle of light. She looked like her, but she didn't feel like her. Her ambient magic thrummed with anger. Selphie thought she could taste strawberries and smell freshly washed linen and something more bitter… copper, maybe?

Rinoa held out her hand and the air itself warped and shivered and produced a sheet of paper. "Remember this?"

Selphie leaned forward and squinted at the type. A heavy ball sank in her gut. "Yeeaahh…."

"'Until Timber is liberated'," Rinoa read. "That's what your contract says. It's still valid because Timber is still under Galbadian control. That means –"

"Hoo boy."

" – you still work for me."

"Rinny, Squall is gonna be SO mad –"

"Do you have the authority to terminate the contract?"

"Uh…nooooo. But –"

"Can you turn your back on me? On him?"

Selphie pouted at her friend, then sighed. "I guess not."

Rinoa nodded brightly and the contract disappeared into whatever part of space she'd plucked it from. "Alright! I knew I could count on you! You know I would ask Squall but… it's hard for him, with Garden and everything. Besides, maybe he'd rather turn a blind eye and hope that someone else will rescue him." She seemed to warm to the idea. "Yeah. Maybe he'd rather not know the details and just be pleased with the result!"

"Maybe," Selphie said doubtfully. "Do you have a plan?"

Rinoa smiled. "I _always_ have a plan."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

Rinoa always did have a plan, but they were rarely good plans, mostly because they were rehashed from movies that worked just fine in fiction, but in real life? Not so much. Then again, Selphie had always been partial to a good old-fashioned bust-in-first-ask-questions-later job. They usually meant crazy weapons and explosions and guts flying everywhere and big fountains of blood spraying up walls.

Doctor Kadowaki had once told her that this disassociation with reality was harmful in the long term to her psyche, and it was true that Selphie had seen less appeal in explosions since Trabia… exploded. But she still couldn't fight her excitement about the unpredictable outcome of a half-brewed plan.

Being teleported was also new and exciting. Some people might have been concerned by Rinoa's tentative, 'I'm not very good at it yet so, um, sorry if we end up in the ocean or Centra or something', but Selphie was too busy daydreaming about being broken down into a bazillion particles then zapped back together again – or however teleportation worked. She didn't know. Neither did Rinoa, for that matter.

So she jumped up and down and yelled, "I'm ready to get zapped into tiny Selphie-bits! Let's go!"

The pair stood inside Selphie's dorm, armed and ready. Rinoa muttered something under her breath then drew her hand vertically downward. There was a pervasive smell of ozone and petrol, then the air unzipped (for lack of a better word in Selphie's mind) and a window appeared suspended by nothing. Selphie peered through and saw familiar metal walls: Galbadia Prison.

"There has to be no causalities," Rinoa said warningly, "because if this is ever traced back to Garden we don't need a body count hanging over our heads. It's a covert get in, get out recuse mission."

"Got it!" Selphie said.

"Luckily the magic barrier inside the prison doesn't work on me," Rinoa added. "I guess it's sorceress stuff, but I don't know. Anyway, I'll be there for magic back up, but I really wanna stay out of the way to avoid suspicion. Hopefully they'll think it's a big operation to bust him out!"

Selphie cocked her head. "Hey, but like, won't they automatically suspect Garden?"

"Maybe. But it could just as likely be Raijin and Fujin, or one of those sorceress cults. I hear there are people who literally worship Seifer for being a knight. Anyway, I'm sure Squall can figure out the details after."

Selphie cocked her head further to the side._ Yikes. Squall is gonna be so mad. Scrap that, Xu is gonna spontaneously combust!_ She considered these possible implications a moment longer, then inwardly shrugged and yelled, "Explosions!"

Rinoa pulled a balaclava over her face and Selphie mirrored her. They looked kind of ridiculous, but it was warranted. In all seriousness, there would be a huge shitstorm if they were discovered.

Rinoa stuck a finger through the portal like she was testing the temperature of a bath, then nodded. "Alright. Let's go."

Seifer had always wondered what it would feel like to be at the wrong end of a gun. It was one thing to be in a fight, weapon in hand, with his chances of winning far greater than the poor sap he'd been pitted against, but to look down the barrel of gun and know it was Death's final stare? That was something entirely new.

There was little fear in him, only morbid curiosity, a touch of impatience and tiredness. Mainly tiredness. It probably wasn't normal to feel such apathy in the face of death. Doubtless this was the summary of years of intensive emotional training at Garden that worked to simultaneously desensitise and sharpen the mind. Not to say that fear was eliminated; fear kept people alive. In the case of SeeD, it was controlled and used as a weapon instead. So although his mind had given up, his body was beating with adrenalin that made his skin tingle and heart race. Everything was amplified tenfold: sound, smell, touch, colour.

The soldier in front of him was nameless, uniformed in dark blue, and holding a short-range rifle to Seifer's head. Seifer saw in exaggeration his grip shift, the tightening of his finger as he squeezed the trigger and -

The rifle exploded into white feathers.

Seifer blinked. The soldier blinked. The judge stopped mid-sentence. The line of Galbadian officers behind him gawped.

"Booyaka!"

Someone grabbed him around the waist and yanked him backwards. He braced himself for impact against the wall, but he phased through it and carried on going, through the bricks and down, down. Wind whistled in his ears as he picked up speed. The air became fresh and crisp and smelled like salt. The metal walls were replaced by dazzling blue sky and in its centre was a sizeable tear through which the Galbadian officers gawped in disbelief. Then the fissure closed, and he hit water.

The shock almost shunted the air out of his lungs, but old training instincts kicked in and he clamped his mouth shut and kicked against unexpected currents. The water was freezing and dark and the cuffs around his wrists and ankles dragged him deeper. He wondered if he had been shot and he was dead, and this was his descent into the hells. Made sense, except he hadn't expected the sensation of drowning to be quite so real.

A legion of arms hauled him towards the light. He broke the surface with a tremendous gasp and was pulled onto the deck of a ship. He rolled onto his back and blinked at the sun, breathing heavily and soaked to the bone. As his brain scrambled to keep up, he heard elated woops to his right.

"Woo-hoo! Mission successful, Captain!"

"We did it! Yeaaaah!"

Seifer looked to the side in time to see Rinoa and the messenger girl from Squad A high-five and hug. They pulled away from each and, giggling, Rinoa said, "Sorry about dropping us into the sea. It was super hard trying to pinpoint the ship and I panicked a bit."

Tilmitt tugged off her soaked dark sweater and flung it carelessly onto the deck. "You did awesome, Rinny! We totally pulled it off! We should totally go rogue and rob banks!"

"Well, we kinda have gone rogue."

"I can't wait to tell Irvy about this he is gonna be so –"

Seifer sat up slowly, cuffed wrists limp in his lap. The shock was wearing off and familiar anger was simmering in his chest. Of _course_ it had to be SeeD. Of _course_ it had to be Rinoa. Hyne, they couldn't just leave it alone. "I didn't fucking asked to be rescued."

The girls stopped chattering and stared at him. The Squad A girl – Tilmitt, he suddenly remembered – wasn't of interest to him, but Rinoa's gaze he held. There was a biting feeling his chest – he hadn't seen her since he'd thrown her to Adel – but he swallowed it down and said, "I especially didn't want Garden's help."

Rinoa's face turned stony and she turned her nose up at him. "Then you'll be happy to know it isn't Garden. Just me."

"Well, you sorta hired me sooooo… also kinda Garden," Tilmitt put in sheepishly.

Rinoa shrugged. "Whatever. Anyway, we just saved your life. Aren't you going to say thank you? It's the least you could do."

He stood up, banishing whatever shakiness might command his limbs, and scowled down at her. "Why?"

"Because it's nice to say thank you when –"

"Why did you save me? What's in it for you?"

Rinoa's face grew troubled and he felt a rush of accomplishment. There. She hadn't thought this through, as usual. She didn't even know why she'd saved him, and the backlash for this would not outweigh whatever goal she'd hoped to achieve.

She said, "I just didn't want to see you die." She glanced at Tilmitt. "None of us did. Not even Squall. Loathe as he is to admit it…"

His chest was tight with anger now. "I don't need your _pity_."

"It's not pity!" she said. "Just… nobody wanted you dead. Gosh, is it really that hard to say thank you? I mean, I can take you back –"

"I'm kinda thinkin' we should," Tilmitt said. "I'd forgotten what an ass he is."

"Yeah, he is kind of an ass."

"Probably why the Galbadians wanted him dead in the first place."

Seifer ground his teeth. "Alright, shut up. It's done now. I suppose you're gonna take me back to Garden?"

Rinoa took a startled step back. "Hyne, no! I don't want Garden framed for this! I mean, I don't particularly want to get framed for it either but…"

"Will you uncuff me at least?" he asked.

Rinoa hesitated, then waved a hand.

The cuffs around his wrists and ankles exploded into brilliant feathers. He watched them float to the deck and dissolve like sugar in water, then cocked an eyebrow at her. "So… how's being a sorceress workin' out for ya?"

He had to admit, the punch did catch him off guard. It was very un-Rinoa like. Not much oomf behind it but the implication stung a bit. He massaged his jaw and half-smirked at her pouty expression and balled fist.

"Alright. I deserved that."

She jabbed a finger at him. "Darn right you did! And it's working for me just fine, thank you very much. Squall is an excellent knight."

Now that _did_ sting and his smirk soured, but before he could say anything, a man dressed in a white uniform ran over carrying a phone that was buzzing. Rinoa grimaced and muttered, "Speak of the devil."

"Well, it was being broadcast live," Tilmitt said. "I mean, Squall probably wasn't watching it, but I bet Xu was. On record. With popcorn. And balloons. And those little poppers that shoot confetti." She glanced unapologetically at Seifer. "No offense."

Rinoa took the cell and answered it with a rushed apology, then moved further along the deck for some privacy. Not that Seifer cared to listen.

The Tilmitt girl watched her go while she bounced on her heels and inexplicably chattered to herself.

"Yikes, I bet that's an awkward convo. Squall is probably gonna be mad at me too but… if I said no Rinny would've gone alone. Better someone was there to watch her, right? Yeah. He knows what she's like when she sets her mind on something. Although, I guess I'm still gonna get disciplined for this. Bleeeh, the disciplinary room smells like cheese nowadays." She clapped her hands suddenly. "Oh yeah! I almost forgot!"

He really didn't see the punch coming this time and there was enough force in it to knock him off balance. The girl might have been petite but apparently she packed a punch. He'd get a bruise from that one.

"That's for Trabia!" she declared.

He recognised the look in her eyes. Not some half-baked hurt like Rinoa had in hers, but fire and vengeance. Right. She'd been a Trabian transfer student, hadn't she? Not that it mattered.

He said, "If you hit me again I'll break every bone in your arm, Messenger Girl."

Her green eyes were molten with anger, then she shrugged blithely and grinned. "You sure can try! Hey, here comes Matron."

Seifer flinched inwardly. If he made a list of all the people he didn't want to see again in his lifetime, Edea would come second only to Ultimecia. Still, he turned to meet her with a raised chin.

She had aged since he'd last seen her. Her dark hair was streaked grey at the temples and there were little worry lines creeping around her eyes, but she was still as beautiful and delicate as he remembered. Her eyes were those from his past; doe-brown and coaxing and concerned. The only mother he'd ever known, taken away and never replaced when he was transferred to Garden. She had vanished from his life, and Cid had made sure all memory of her was scrubbed clean, until Ultimecia had restored his GF-damaged memory.

Seeing her now reignited the hate and love he felt for her, although he still didn't know if he could forgive her for everything she'd put him through.

His flat glare stilled the hand she'd raised to touch him with. Her eyes looked hurt, but mainly relieved. She wrestled with her words, then eventually settled on, "Hello, Seifer."

It was probably the first time she'd properly seen him since he was six. The other times had been through the clouded haze of possession.

"We got 'im!" Tilmitt exclaimed, hopping up to Edea. "Thanks for letting us borrow the White SeeD ship. I know it was all a bit last minute and Rinoa isn't the best at thinking of the details when it comes to crazy plans."

Edea smiled fondly at her. "I'm glad to help. Looks like Rinoa is off the phone. Be a dear and see what Squall wants to do next? I'd like to speak to Seifer in private."

Seifer sneered in disgust. "I'm not listenin' to whatever half-baked plan Commander Puberty and Feathers have concocted. And I have nothing to say to you. Drop me off at the nearest port."

Tilmitt elbowed him. "Don't speak to Matron like that! And Squall is my commander so I gotta follow orders."

A worm of anxiety squirmed in Seifer's chest. He glanced around at the enclosed ship and the dozen (White?) SeeD on board. At Rinoa and Edea. It wasn't safe for him to stay here. If they didn't dock soon he might have to throw himself into the sea. He would drown eventually, but maybe that wouldn't be the end of the world. There were worse fates.

Edea was staring at him. He knew she couldn't get inside his head anymore, but it made him uneasy. Seifer didn't like feeling uneasy, so outright refused to feel it at all. Instead, he fed it to his anger. She'd probably known about it the whole time, known about what was going to happen to him. This was all her fault.

Rinoa joined them with a troubled look. "Squall says we should go to the Orphanage. Nobody knows its location so it's the best place to lay low for a while. He's releasing a statement to the press regarding Garden's non-involvement and says he's going to put on a hefty show of working with Galbadia to look for Seifer. He's doing his best to keep my involvement from Xu, but I must go back to Garden and show my face. Squall thinks I should release a press statement separate to Garden anyway." She added, "Nobody knows I can teleport except Squall so there's no way to prove I've been away. They don't have CCTV in the dorms."

"What shall I do?" Tilmitt asked.

"Squall says to come back to Garden too, then he's going to assign you to the mission to 'hunt' down Seifer, though you'll actually be stationed at the Orphanage to watch him until he decides what to do with him. He said he'd fill you in on the –"

"Decides what to do with me?" Seifer practically spat the words. The anger in his chest surged out like lava through a crack in the earth. "I don't need a fucking babysitter and I did not ask for any of this. You just presumed I needed rescuing and now Garden gets to decide what to do with me? Just let me go! I can take care of myself."

Rinoa whirled on him, hands on hips. The air thrummed with magic. "Perhaps you don't understand the situation, Seifer. You don't get to go free. You owe me. You owe _us_. Not for rescuing you, but for attacking Garden, destroying Trabia, sacrificing me to a sorceress and betraying your family and home." She lowered her arms. "I know what's happening to you now, but I had to see it for myself. Edea knows too. We can talk about it more when we get to the Orphanage. And when we get there, you're going to stay there until I say so. Okay?"

Seifer clenched his teeth. He supposed if he had to be anyone's prisoner, he might as well be Rinoa's. It was hard to say no to a sorceress, anyway.

He'd play their stupid game for now and turn the rules on them when he had the chance.

* * *

Seifer was nothing if a little bit narcissistic, so to him it seemed like the Orphanage was a manifestation of himself. The Childhood Orphanage was pristine stonework held aloft by Centran-style columns, while the Orphanage of his teen years was battered ruins barely remembered, and this Orphanage was different and unknown, an amalgamation of its past selves combined into something new. The walls were a patchwork of old and new bricks, and the cracked flagstones and roof tiles had been replaced and weeded. Windows had glass and shutters and the entrances had doors, and freshly painted picket fences trimmed the pathways. It looked like Cid had pumped the entirety of his retirement money into refurbishing the building and expanding into the old ruins that spotted the cliff face. He noted, with a pang of trepidation, that Edea had decided to take on the newest influx of post-war orphans, and they came sprinting out of the half-ruins in a grubby, noisy horde.

This was not a good place to be right now.

The children clung to Edea's skirts in adoration. A familiar sight. Even without her sorcery her soothing tone was enough to coax them into quiet. Seifer felt a pang of nostalgia, then brushed it away dismissively.

"Settle down, children. This is my – a friend of mine," Edea introduced Seifer, placating the whispers and questions. "Be polite to him. He used to live here too, once."

A harried looking female White SeeD appeared in the doorway. "Children, you've seen Matron, now back to class."

The childrens' combined whine was creepily pitch perfect, but they trudged back inside anyway.

Seifer eyed Edea suspiciously, arms crossed. "Class? Another Garden?"

"No, dear," Edea said a touch reproachfully. "Just an ordinary school. Cid and I have expanded the Orphanage a great deal and found a new purpose for the White Seeds."

"Lucky them, not to be shipped off to a school that teaches kids how to kill." Not that he cared. Anything else sounded boring. But he knew it would hurt Edea – and it did. She looked away and touched her cheek. He said, "Spare me the explanation; I know it already."

Edea considered him for a long moment. She looked sad, and it irritated him. What did she have to be sad about? He was the one who lost everything.

"I'm afraid I can't offer you your old room; it's become a dormitory again. But there's guesthouses for the teachers now, up along the Cliffside. You and Selphie can stay there until we figure out how to help you."

"I didn't ask for help," Seifer spat. "And I'm not gonna spend the rest of my days rotting in these ruins with _you_."

She ignored his retort. "I trust you enough that I won't send an escort. Please get some rest. When Rinoa gets back we can talk at length. I'll send up some dinner later, and maybe some cake."

"Cake? Why the hell –"

"I wouldn't forget your birthday, Seifer." She smiled. "Happy twenty-third."

She walked away, leaving him glaring at her back and, for once, feeling more lost than angry.

* * *

The view from the Cliffside was a window into his past. Just a few years earlier he probably wouldn't have been able to recollect it, much less experience such troublesome pangs of nostalgia, but Ultimecia had changed that.

So many presumed it was glory and power that had appealed to him most; titles and parades and going down in history. That was all fine and Seifer didn't dispute that, but it wasn't entirely true. Ultimecia had offered him something nobody else could: an identity. Not only could he finally set himself apart from the mundane masses in Garden and stand alone on a pedestal of eternal greatness, but he could finally understand himself.

To lack a memory was to lack identity. Like so many other cadets, he lived without a backstory. No memory of childhood, of siblings, parents, events. He was a painting distorted by rain, unrecognisable even to himself. He saw the forgetting as weakness, but could not fight the power of the GFs. They tore away his memories and with them went his identity. It left him feeling… incomplete. Pathetic.

Ultimecia restored his memories and offered him the past, present and future. And so, just like that, he remembered everything. He remembered his mother and father in fragments: tall, blond Dolletians who were killed in a raid during the first war. He was sent to live with another relative, but they could not afford to care for him in the post-war economic crash, and his time there was brief and troubled. And then he remembered the Orphanage, Matron and Cid, the other kids. Long summer days on the beaches, bonfires at night, fireworks in the dark, running wild through fields of flowers. And of course he remembered them leaving, one by one, until just he and Squall remained. They shared a bed together, just six years old, Squall crying into the pillows and Seifer whispering, "We'll get 'em back. We'll be together again, all of us, I'll drag 'em back and we'll fight whoever took 'em."

Seifer sank further into the recliner by the window. Having his memories made him have weird thoughts and some days he kind of hated it. Better when the simmering hatred was a nameless mystery. Everything was a bit simpler that way.

What was left now, anyway? He'd earned everything only to have it stripped away again. What was the point in it all?

_Shit, I gotta get out of this damn house. I'm turnin' into fucking Leonhart_.

Rinoa had been gone two days and he'd holed himself up in the guesthouse with a few books to stave off boredom and, admittedly, to avoid Edea. He'd ignored the persistent knocking on the front door, taken the plates of food she left for him on the doorstep, then left the empty plates there for her to pick up. She deserved no less.

Understandable then, that when a knocking came again at the door, he ignored it. Unfortunately for him, the knocker wasn't accustomed to being ignored.

"Hello? Helllloooo? Oh hey, there you are! I was looking for you!"

Seifer turned disbelievingly to the intruder. "Do you always let yourself into people's houses?"

"Only if they don't answer the door," Tilmitt countered with a grin. "Rinoa sent me to come get you." She tapped her lip. "I think she's been losing sleep over the whole thing. She seems pretty serious, y'know? Not like herself."

Seifer grunted dismissively. "Serves her right for not thinking things through properly."

"Eeeeh, true. But it's also 'cause she cares." Tilmitt glanced at her shoes as though considering taking them off, so he got to his feet and made to leave. He all but barged her out of the way, and she hopped after him down the dirt track with a sidelong glance.

"You know, she was pretty much the only person who decided to rescue you."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "And here I was thinking Chicken-wuss would've been first to jump in front of the firing squad."

"You weren't expecting anyone to show up, were you?" She looked around expectantly. "Hey, where are Raijin and Fujin, anyway?"

He glanced briefly out to sea. That was not a topic he wanted to touch on right now. The sooner he could convince Edea and Rinoa that he wasn't worth the trouble, the sooner he could leave. "Safe."

"They didn't ditch you?"

"No."

"'Cause they did last time."

He said nothing.

"…'Cause you were proper cray-cray. I mean, even they didn't approve of you feeding your ex-girlfriend to Adel."

"She was never my girlfriend," Seifer said irritably. "If you're expecting an apology, you ain't getting one."

"About Rinoa? Or Trabia?"

"Both."

Selphie stopped in her tracks, then after a moment she skipped after him and said, "Wow, you really are an ass. How would you have felt if someone had blown up B-Garden? You would've been mad, right? So mad that you probably would've punched that person in the face and then expected an apology."

He spun on his heel to face her, heart pounding with building rage. "I won't apologise for what I don't feel bad for. I followed orders. It's done. Apologising won't change anything."

Tilmitt bounced on her heels. "Nooooo. But maybe I'd feel better. And you'd feel better."

"About what?"

"Yourself."

He blinked, clenched his jaw, then snorted and stalked away. Infuriatingly, she followed, but wisely chose to keep her distance.

Rinoa and Edea were in the kitchen conversing over coffee when the pair arrived. Seifer made a beeline for the coffee and poured himself the rest of it, Tilmitt be damned (like she needed caffeine anyway). He downed half of it, then demonstrated whatever was left of his self-restraint by savouring the rest.

"Hello to you, too," Rinoa said grumpily. She looked dishevelled and designer simultaneously, wearing clothes that might have cost a cadet's weekly salary while ruining the polished illusion with the dark rings under her eyes and un-brushed hair.

"Squall mad at you?" Seifer asked half-interestedly.

"No. But he is mad at you for dragging me into all this."

"Me? You dragged yourself into this!"

"Yeah, yeah, 'I didn't ask for this,' blah, blah." She fixed him with a piercing look. "You know, I didn't want to see you die, especially not at the hands of _that man_ and the Galbadian government, but I also have other reasons for needing you alive." She gestured to the seat opposite her and he begrudgingly sat down. Tilmitt took the seat next to him and accepted a fizzy drink from Edea.

"I don't recall a time during my sorceress ancestry where the knight outlived the sorceress," she began. "I'm sure it's happened – Edea is too – but it's rare and not documented. You'd be the first and… hopefully the last. Yours was an exceptional circumstance as Ultimecia was an exceptional sorceress, but mostly knights are expected to die defending their sorceress before harm befalls her." She fiddled with her mug. "If something was to happen to me, I want to know what can be done for Squall. Do you understand?"

He peered at her interestedly. Rinoa was always unpredictable. "So, I'm an… experiment? You gonna observe me and take notes?"

"I'm going to try to cure you!" Rinoa declared. "Well, not me personally… I still don't understand my powers very well. But there is one man who might be able to…" She trailed off apologetically.

Doctor Odine. Of course.

Seifer didn't know what was worse, spending his last days in the ruins of his childhood with a mother he hated, or being prodded and dissected by the mad scientist who ironically paved the way for both SeeD and Ultimecia.

"Wait, what is happening?" Tilmitt looked decidedly befuddled, her stupid hair whipping around her face as she shot a look between all three of them.

Rinoa said, "Seifer. Seifer is…"

"Hollowing," he interrupted. He couldn't bear to hear some cotton-swathed explanation. "That's what it's called. Something like dying, I guess, but worse. Knights can't live without their sorceress so when the sorceress dies, she drags her knight with her into the afterlife, or wherever the fuck sorceresses go when they die."

"That seems kinda… unfair," Tilmitt said. "But Ultimecia passed on her power to Edea when she died, and now Rinny has it. So like… doesn't that count for something?"

Seifer shrugged.

Rinoa said, "Like I said, not much is known about it. That's why I'm taking him to Doctor Odine." She screwed up her face. "Sorry."

Tilmitt clicked her fingers and looked at Seifer. "That's why you let Galbadia capture you! You were dying anyway and wanted an easy way out!"

Seifer felt a rush of anger and kicked back in his chair. Nobody bothered to scold him when he crossed his feet on the table. "'Easy'. Right. Whatever makes you feel better, Messenger Girl."

Rinoa said, "It isn't as simple as dying, anyway. This… Hollowing. In the end, he won't be himself anymore. He'll be… undead, I guess. An empty husk mindlessly attacking. It's a sort of… poetic justice."

Tilmitt twisted her glass on the table. "Wow, sucks to be you. Whoever thought of that punishment had a really lame sense of humour."

"Hyne, most likely," Seifer said wryly.

"I won't let them torture you," Rinoa promised. "But if anyone can find out how to stop or reverse the Hollowing process, Doctor Odine can. I couldn't live with myself if Squall…"

She lapsed into silence and Tilmitt reached across the table to squeeze her hand. "It won't ever come to that, Rinny."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Squall's a hollow shell of a man already."

That earned him a trio of flinty looks and he smirked.

Rinoa stood up. "We're leaving for Esthar tomorrow morning. It's unsafe for you to be around the children. You know better than anyone the effects of Hollowing."

Tilmitt threw him a curious look, then followed Rinoa out the door. He watched them leave but his attention was broken by a hand over his own. He snatched it away from Edea's grasp and shook off her concerned look. "This is all your fault, you know."

She held his gaze and whispered, "I know. But if I'd known about the impact it would have on you –"

"Save it," he said sharply. He stood up, the chair screeching across the stone floor. "Don't try to contact me again."

He left her like that in kitchen, and returned to the guesthouse alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

* * *

Rinoa had to teleport Selphie to Garden so she could fly the Ragnarok back to the Orphanage under the pretense that she was on a mission to find Seifer. She had to sign forged paperwork and everything, all while under Xu's suspicious eye. Meanwhile, Squall was making a big show of spearheading the search in Galbadia and had issued a statement that covered for Rinoa's disappearance from the public eye, saying she was locked down within B-Garden for her own protection after concerns that the sorceress cults were responsible for Seifer's rescue. Quistis had been left to attend Garden while Squall went to Galbadia with Zell (to 'keep him out of the way', which was understandable.)

Once Squall had left, Rinoa disappeared to her room, then teleported to the Raganarok to meet Edea, Selphie, Irvine, and a very petulant Seifer Almasy.

Selphie did her best to keep tabs on him, especially considering he could apparently go coo-coo at any moment. Well, even more coo-coo than he already was. He'd been belligerent, bolshie and irksome so far, but Selphie didn't let it get to her. She just tuned him out by humming 'Catch Me Choco' over and over.

"What is this thing anyway?" he asked over her shoulder as she began punching coordinates into the Ragnarok's interface. "Did Cid commission this…?"

Selphie blinked up at him while still punching buttons. "Huh? What? Oh, no, no, no. Squall and Rinoa found the Ragnarok in space! It was full of tentacle monsters that had eaten the crew and turned them into zombies, but Rinoa and Squall freed their souls with magic, beat the monsters to death with their bare fists, and then used the power of love to steer the Ragnarok back to earth!"

"Um, that's not _exactly_ what happened," Rinoa interjected from her seat further back. "It is from space though. It was used to transport Adel, twenty years ago. Garden has just recommissioned it."

"And you just _happen_ to know how to fly it?" Seifer glanced backward at the others. "Moreover, you all trust her to fly it?"

"Hey, I'm a very good driver, thank you very much!" Selphie said, a tad defensively. "I minored in aeronautical engineering and navigation. But I mean, they're all pretty much tin cans with wings and buttons when you get down it."

Seifer scowled at the plethora of holographic graphs, flashing lights and beeping panels that stretched across the Ragnarok's cockpit. Eventually he concluded, "You're fuckin' weird."

Irvine took a step toward him, glowering under the rim of is hat. "Mind your mouth, Almasy."

Seifer turned to him with a smirk. "Oh yeah? Or what? You gonna lasso me, cowboy?"

Irvine's expression darkened. "Y'know, we beat you once, we can do it again. You could add that to your list of defeats, though I'm sure you gave up keeping count of them a long time ago."

Seifer took a step forward but was apprehended by Rinoa.

"Enough," she snapped. "Sit down, Seifer." And he did. He was forced to with magic. He struggled against the invisible bond and protested when Rinoa handcuffed him to the chair, but she didn't seem to care much as she added, "Can't have you lapsing into a hollow state while we're in the air."

He settled back into the chair grouchily. "If you wanted to get kinky you only needed to ask, Rin."

Rinoa threw Selphie a pleading look, who punched the controls to kick start the Ragnarok's engine. The sooner they got to Esthar the better, apparently.

Flying airships was Selphie's favourite thing of all time, alongside baby chocobo, glitter bombs, real bombs, Mr Moon-Moon the stuffed Moomba, and Ma Dincht's sweet-bean maple cakes. For most people it would be a time of intense concentration and stress, but Selphie was able to switch off. Not literally, of course. But while her hands worked through the controls and flight paths and altitude control, her mind wandered, played through made-up stories, and imagined how awesome the upcoming festival was going to be. It was relaxing. She was going somewhere, she was occupied, and her mind didn't wander to weird, dark places that made her question her life choices.

Irvine broke that train of thought by answering his vidphone. It was Quistis wanting updates, and Irvine left the cockpit to get out of Seifer's earshot, followed by Rinoa.

In the distance, the first emerald spires of Esthar caught the brilliant light of the desert sun. It stirred a feeling of both nostalgia and excitement in Selphie, who had spent a little over three months apprenticed to an Estharian mechanic. He taught her more than she'd ever dreamed about Esthar and Garden's transportation and flight mechanics, which she was able to apply to the rebuilding o T-Garden. It was the best time Selphie had had in years. Which probably sounded a bit lame to a non-techy. But hey. Who cared what non-techy's thought, anyway?

Speaking of which.

Selphie punched a few buttons, then swivelled on the chair to look at Seifer. He cut a pretty sad sight handcuffed to the chair, so she skipped over to him and used a bobby pin to pick the lock. It fell away and he massaged his wrists, sending her a baleful, unappreciative glare. He said nothing.

She returned to the windows spanning the cockpit and peered down at the city. Buildings seemed cut from crystal and sea-glass, ribboned by undulating tubeworks and brilliant blue bridges. The air was abuzz with a thousand hovercars, and great screens flickered with holographic advertisements: tooth whitening, law firms, discount stores, robotic pets, magic infused necklaces.

Selphie threw out her arms and twirled around. "Pretty neat, huh?"

"What is?"

"Esthar, duh!"

"I've seen it before."

Oh. Right. While he'd been driving the Lunatic Pandora. To blow up the city, or whatever. "You remember it, then?"

He shifted; she couldn't tell whether he was uncomfortable or annoyed at the question. "They knew Esthar was there. Galbadia, I mean. But they couldn't penetrate the shield without making a lot of commotion. _She_ was plannin' to move onto Esthar once the West was secured, though."

"Oh…" Selphie fiddled with the hem of her skirt. She didn't need to ask who 'she' was. "But anyway, now Esthar has opened its borders the advancements in technology are craaazy! They even provided us SeeDs with vidphones! President Laguna promised to send aid for rebuilding Trabia. It's gonna be like, super high tech and awesome! Way cooler than Balamb."

"Y'know all the Gardens are Centran tech anyway," Seifer said, distantly. "Afterall, the Estharians trace their ancestry back to Centran immigrants. All this technology pre-existed on Centra, the Estharians just tweaked it."

"Improved it," Selphie amended. "I guess they kinda had to. The Estharian continent is renowned for Lunar Crys." The city's edge could be seen now, and beyond that was baked, dead earth. Razed to rock by moon-monsters and radioactive magic flares that dropped from the moon. "I bet it was nice here, once."

"They say it was a savanna," Seifer said. "Grasslands, rivers and rainforests, with giant cats, mammoths and snakes so large they could wrap around Garden twice. All extinct now."

Selphie stared at him. "How do you know that?"

He snorted derisively. "It's called being educated, dimwit. Didn't they teach you history in the snowlands?"

Selphie inclined her head curiously. Of course she'd taken history; Trabia had the same curriculum as Balamb. But they didn't bother to teach _ancient_ history. Then again, it was hardly surprising that Seifer would be a secret history buff considering his obsession with knights and witches and weird stuff like that.

_We all have our ways of avoiding reality, I guess._

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be driving this thing?" Seifer pointed out. "You're gonna overshoot Odine's lab."

Without looking, she punched a button on the control panel and the Ragnarok glided to a surprisingly smooth stop. Selphie stuck her tongue out at him. "It's called autopilot, _dimwit_."

Rinoa re-entered the cockpit then planted her hands on her hips when she noticed Seifer walking about. "How did you get out? Oh, never mind. I have to make a show of apprehending you. Odine is nothing if he isn't a coward. He'll choose safety over his own curiosity if he feels even remotely threatened, so try to be nice, okay?"

"No," Seifer said. Probably just to be uncooperative for the sake of being uncooperative. "How long is this gonna take?"

Rinoa blinked at him. "Uh… I don't know? It's not like you've got somewhere to be, Seifer."

His gaze raked the walls of the Ragnarok in irritation. At length, he stuck out his hands and Rinoa summoned some weird faux light cuffs. Sephie ran her fingers through them and giggled. "Tickles."

Selphie returned to her seat to land the ship manually, then lowered the side ramp so they could disembark.

Outside, a platoon of Estharian soldiers were waiting for them, fully armed and looking nervous. Doctor Odine appeared from their ranks and scurried over to Rinoa wearing a creepy-old-man expression. Even worse, Selphie mused, a creepy-old-man-_scientist_ expression. He looked like he wanted to undress her, dissect her and eat her brain simultaneously.

"Ah Sorceress Rinoa, it iz a pleasure to see you again so soon."

"Hello, Odine," Rinoa deadpanned. "This is Seifer Almasy. He's allowed us to study his hollowficiation, as we discussed."

Odine's eyes were magnified behind owlish spectacles, yet somehow still appeared beady and conniving as he walked around Seifer like a farmer inspecting a prize sow. "Ah, yes, Ultimecia's plaything. This will be a most interesting study, most interesting. The effects of such powerful magic on the mind will far exceed any damage ze GFs can do… Truly a fascinating fate that even I was not aware of."

Seifer looked like he was envisioning all the ways to snap the man's neck, but Rinoa threw him a warning look so he settled for grinding his teeth and staring off into the distance.

"Hey, if you get to the bottom of what causes hollowfication," Selphie asked, "could you find a way to reverse the GF memory loss?"

Odine peered at her disinterestedly. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. I was not employed to sustain a person, only to enhance zem as human weapons. Longterm consequences were not considered."

"What are you going to do with him?" Rinoa asked.

Odine waved a hand. "Brain scans, mainly. Monitoring and recording ze cortex's responses to stimuli. Blood samples, biopsies –"

Seifer scowled. "Wait a fuckin' minute –"

"No dissecting," Rinoa cut him off. "No cloning. No torture. No deprivation tests. Agreed?"

Odine flopped his head around, causing his top-knot to bounce back and forth like a moogle's pom-pom. "But, Sorceress, in ze name of science and progression it iz important to understand all aspects of –"

"Otherwise," Rinoa continued. "I will be very upset." She leaned forward. "Very. Upset."

Odine audibly swallowed, then lowered his eyes. "Yes, Sorceress."

"The purpose of doing this is to find the cause of the hollowing and to find a cure or preventative," she continued. "Not to find a way to control, duplicate, enhance or feed it to vulnerable children so they can fight with super powers and summon other-realm monsters."

Odine's shoulders slumped. "I understand."

"Good." She transferred her gaze to Seifer. "Don't be an uncooperative ass. I'll be back in a few days."

Rinoa returned to the Raganrok, followed by Irvine. Selphie lingered. It felt weird leaving Seifer in the hands of Doctor Odine, who in her eyes had definitely won the Least Trusted Scientist of the Year Forever Award. It was his machine that had allowed Ultimecia to go back in time, and his inventions that had allowed GFs to be junctioned, causing her to lose all her precious memories, and he who had kidnapped Sis and made her life miserable. Even though Doctor Odine was the only person on the planet who could find a cure for this weird hollow-thing, it didn't stop him from being a total dick.

"Give 'em hell!" Selphie said as she punched Seifer on the arm. She didn't wait for his response; she skipped up the docking ramp of the Ragnarok and left him on the shadow of Odine's Lab.

* * *

"Oh. My. Holy. Tapdancing. T-boarding. Iceskating. Hyne. _Is this what I think it is_? Tell me it is. TELL ME IT IS."

Kiros appraised Selphie with a look of great patience and befuddlement. Selphie got that look a lot. Not that she cared. Those kind of looks gave people wrinkles, anyways.

"Yes," Kiros said. "That is Laguna's pencil."

"I can tell because it's chewed at the end," Selphie gushed.

"How do you know he –"

"Can I have it? Would he mind? I'm sure he has loads he probably won't even know and you won't tell him and I won't tell him so c'mon pleeeassse? I gotta add it to my collection!"

"Collection," Kiros deadpanned.

"Of Laguna's things," Rinoa filled in, looking more than a tad embarrassed but still explaining anyway. "In her… In her Laguna Shrine."

"Sometimes I auction them off," Selphie beamed.

"You know he's Squall's dad, right?" Rinoa said.

"Yep!"

"And like… basically my father-in-law."

"Yep!"

"…So it's a littttle bit creepy that you have a mega-crush on my sort-of relative."

"Only if you word it like that," Selphie said, as she slipped the chewed pencil into her pocket. "Sir Laguna is a role model, anyway! He overthrew a communist state and defeated an evil sorceress and propelled her into space! He's a low-born Galbadian immigrant that became the frickin' president of a secret nation! And he's a steaming hottie to boot. What's not to be obsessed with?"

"My ears are freezing!"

Rebellion leader, president and ex-soldier in question decided to enter at that moment. He was wearing a pair of hideous crocs over white socks, with rolled up trousers and an apron that had cartoon Moomba printed over it.

"I think the phrase is, my ears are burning," Kiros corrected.

Laguna waved a hand. "Whatever, man. Oh, hey Rinny! Sefie! You both look great. What are you doin' here? Is um… is Squall here?"

"No," Rinoa said, apologetically. "He's away on a mission right now. What are you… doing?"

"Huh?" He looked down at his apron, as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh! Right. I'm bakin' a cake. S'not goin' so well though. Baking is not my strong suit." He untied his apron then flung it towards the nearest chair. It missed, and a harried looking housemaid picked it up instead. "What can I do for you?"

"I know it's a bit last minute, but I was hoping we could stay for a few days," Rinoa said. "If you have room to spare."

"Of course! You don't have to ask, y'know. You're all welcome anytime. A-and Squall is, too. I've tried to reach him but –"

"I'm working on him," Rinoa said with a smile. "It takes a while for Squall to warm up to any kind of idea that involves people or socialising or loud noises or… outside. Basically anything that doesn't involves his gunblade."

Laguna tried not to look to disappointed. "R-right. I understand."

Selphie tore her eyes off Laguna long enough to scan the room. "Hey, is Sis around? I haven't seen her for a while. Also, um… I think there might be smoke coming from the kitchen."

Laguna spun around with an unmanly yelp, then charged towards the source of the burning with Rinoa in tow, yelling something about water magic and spoiled cake. Selphie was tempted to witness the disaster zone, but Ward steered her in the other direction, wordlessly offering to take her to Ellone.

They found her in a pink room in the East Wing of the palace. She was sitting on the balcony reading a book, dressed in a long, silken Estherian-style robe with a blue tie around the waist and flowers embroidered on the collar. Her hair was pinned in elegant folds out of her eyes, and the afternoon sun cast her skin in milky gold.

Ellone had spent most of her life cloistered on a ship under guard. Selphie and her friends had spent most of their lives learning all the ways to kill someone and how to assimilate one's consciousness with monsters from other realms. These differences in upbringing were starkly reflected by Ellone's interior decorating, which hadn't quite caught up with adulthood despite her edging towards thirty. There was an array of stuffed toys on her bed, half hidden behind chiffon drapes that billowed from the ceiling, and there were frilly skirts and blue dresses, and ribbons and flowers, and notebooks with bunnies on the front. Not that Selphie was judging. She didn't judge. Each to their own and all that. Cid had orchestrated everyone's respective upbringings anyway. But seeing her room, seeing Ellone, planted a little niggling thought in the back of Selphie's mind that maybe – maybe it didn't have to be like this…

"Sefie? Are you… okay?"

Selphie blinked, then grinned. "Woops, was I spacin' out for long?"

"Oh, um, I only just noticed you so…"

"It's so good to see you!" Selphie said as she bounced into a hug. "Squall says hi, so does Irvy. He had to run errands but sends his love."

Ellone brushed down the back of her skirt, then sat on the bay window seat. Behind her was a panoramic view of Esthar captured in blinding blue; a city of mirrors reflecting the sky. Selphie dive-bombed into a pile of cushions and picked a big fluffy moogle toy to strangle.

"I heard what you did for Seifer," Ellone said quietly.

"Ah… are you annoyed? I know during the war he –"

"Oh no, no! Despite everything I still… He's still like a little brother to me. Even if he was very scary."

"He's not that scary."

Ellone smiled. "I suppose you would say that."

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"You don't remember? I suppose not. I find that so very sad. All I really have are my memories."

Selphie got up and gripped Ellone's hands. They were so soft in her calloused ones. "Don't say that, Sis! You have your whole future laid out for you! You have Sir Laguna, Squall, a potential sister-in-law – and us! You gotta make new memories!"

She smiled sweetly. "Oh, I know. I'm very thankful. I just find the concept strange… a mind vacant of memories. Surely we use our past experiences to decide how to respond to situations?" She placed a hand delicately on her cheek. "You know, I spoke to a doctor recently who said that those who suffer with amnesia have a hard time imagining the future, because we base future scenarios on past recollections. Selphie, what do you imagine for your future?"

Something in Selphie's mind became very slow. Usually her answers were quick-picked rapid-fire responses based on emotion. But there wasn't an easy answer here. It took her a moment to realise that her brain had simply shut away those thoughts. Why?

"That's… too difficult to answer," she said, awkwardly.

"Try. I mean, you must want for something. Children, a home, a promotion?"

"I… I don't know. Hey! But I have a question! Rinoa told me that Ultimecia restored Seifer's memories. Does that mean we could all restore our memories?"

Ellone pressed a finger to her lips. "It would make sense. The memories must still be there somewhere, otherwise you would never have remembered you were all from the orphanage. With the right stimuli, maybe you could remember more."

Selphie smacked her fist in her palm. "Right! That's why I gotta write my diaries as accurately and honestly as possible! So maybe one day in the future people will read 'em and remember something the GFs took." Her eyes glittered. "Hey, hey! You're like, the keeper of our memories, Sis."

Ellone blinked, then blushed. "I guess so. I hope I can help you remember more, Selphie. You had so much fun at the Orphanage."

"I had fun in Trabia too!" Selphie thought of Seifer then. He remembered everything from the past, but what good was remembering if he didn't have a future? Did he know what he wanted? Did any of them? They'd spent their whole lives under the dictation of Garden, moulded to fight a battle already pre-ordained. Now it was over. What was SeeD even for, anymore?

"What's wrong, Selphie?"

"Oh! Ah – nothing. Hey, do you know anything about this hollowing thing Seifer has? Do you think you could find out about by going into the past?"

Ellone tucked her hair behind one ear. "I don't think so. If Seifer doesn't know, then I won't know either. Though of course I'll do anything I can to help."

Selphie left the palace with an uncomfortable knot in her belly that she couldn't understand. Not a new knot though. It had been there for a while now, though she had learned to largely ignore it. Even though, eventually, she knew she would have to confront it.

* * *

It was late summer. Selphie knew this because it was hot but also terribly wet every day. Thunder and lightning tore across a dark mantle; rain lashed flagstones and churned the ocean into froth. Great waves exploded across the shoreline and the wind threatened to tear apart the stone tenements clinging tenuously to the cliff's edge.

Selphie watched the chaos through a window fogged by her breath. It was boring inside. There were no games to play and Matron had temporarily banned them from playing War because last time they played Zell got a scraped knee. It wasn't Irvy's fault though; Zell was a baby and couldn't play rough yet. He should have stayed out the way and played dolls with Sis instead.

_(Very abruptly, it occurred to Selphie that she was observing these thoughts – her thoughts – with a detached curiosity, like an audience to a familiar play. _

_The Gil dropped._

Oh – ooooooh.

_She was back in time. She was herself, maybe fifteen years ago. _

Sis? Sis…? Ellone…?

… Oh… Selphie…?

Yeah! Um, are you… sleeping?

…Yes. I'm sorry, Selphie. I didn't mean to. I was remembering everything from the Orphanage before I went to bed so I must have accidentally –

Eh, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I just wondered if you wanted to show me anything in particular.

Um, I don't – I don't think so…. Sorry.

It's okay! I like remembering.

_And really, it was okay. But it was also really flipping weird and a tad unnerving that Selphie's older sister (sorta) could throw her consciousness back into the past anytime she felt like it or when she went to sleep. Apparently Ellone's power was benign to those who weren't sorceresses, but Selphie had a strong feeling people shouldn't be able to relive their – or anyone else's – past. _

_Regardless, it was fun seeing the Orphanage again and reliving some of the best days of her life, before future-Squall jacked things up.) _

"Booooored. Bored! Bored! Bored!" Little Selphie declared to the window. She had drawn three kitty faces in the condensation, then a T-rexaur eating them, blood splatters and all, but even that was becoming boring.

She was in the dormitory. One not destroyed by age and elements, but wholly intact and sheltering ten little beds lined up against the wall, chests stuffed with toys, shelves with neatly stacked books, and threadbare rugs atop cool flagstones. Old-Selphie reflected on how everything was so much bigger through the eyes of little-Selphie, including Matron. She was on the other side of the room in the play area, ferreting books into a chest with the help of Quistis and Ellone. Squall clung to Ellone's skirt, who tolerated the nuisance with saintly patience. Zell was gathering a squadron of toy soldiers from a chest and lining them up at the end of his bed, and Irvine was sprawled atop a pile of cushions, asleep.

Selphie skipped up to Matron and tugged on her skirt. "Can I go outside and play?"

Matron was somehow more beautiful in Selphie's memory. The sight of her filled her heart with reassurance and sickly-sweet adoration.

_(Through old-Selphie's eyes, it left a bitter aftertaste. She understood why Matron had left them and sent them to Garden to be trained as mercenaries, but understanding that didn't dampen the sting. They'd all been strategically dealt to various points of the globe, all except precious Squall and unmalleable Seifer, but even they had been torn from and then forced to fight their mother respectively. _

_And the real kicker was they all still loved her._

…_No wonder they were all messed up.)_

"No, dear, it's far too dangerous."

Selphie pouted, but Matron was unmoved.

"Tomorrow the storm will clear, and then you can play outside."

"How do yoo know?"

"I just do," she said with a secret, sorceress smile. "Why don't you play with Zell? Looks like he could use a captain for his army."

Selphie pouted harder but was ignored, and Quistis gave her a snooty look down her nose. Selphie stuck her tongue out at her then ran away before she could get in trouble.

"Bored," she whispered as she trailed out the dorm door and into the living area. "Everyone's boring here. Storms aren't scary anyways."

The living area was full of older children Selphie didn't know the names of_ (though Old-Selphie knew they would later become the White SeeDs), _but between the playfights, yelling and pillow forts, Selphie spotted a familiar figure sneaking in through the front door.

"Heeeey, yoo're not allowed outside," Selphie chastised as she skipped up to him.

It was sort of surprising that Seifer hadn't been adopted out considering he was a remarkably sweet looking child. He had wide-set green eyes, golden hair and a grin that might have been endearing if it didn't always herald some kind of unpleasantness, which it nearly always did, when it came to Seifer. In retrospect, Cid probably kept Seifer around on the off chance that Squall might need replacing.

"I don't care," he declared as he shrugged off his drenched raincoat and plopped it on the floor. He was a carrying a bucket in one hand. "Yoo gonna tell on me, Sel?"

_(Sel?)_

"I will," she drawled, "unless yoo tell me whatcha got in ya hand!"

"It's a secret."

"I won't tell!"

"Mmm…"

"C'moooon. I thought we were partners in crime!"

_(We were?)_

They'd heard the phrase from an old detective movie Matron had put on for them some weeks ago and even though they didn't know exactly what it meant, they knew it somehow applied to them.

Seifer peered at her mistrustfully. At length he said, "Okay. But I'm on a top secret quest so we gotta be sneaky."

Selphie nodded excitedly. Seifer was always the best person to break the boredom with. He was never still, never boring, always planning and playing, and he didn't cry or tell when the play resulted in scuffed knees and bruised cheeks and maybe a few bite marks.

"This way," he whispered.

They made a humorous attempt at 'sneaking' through the crowded living area, scurrying from one piece of furniture to another, before darting through the door of the dorms. Matron had left to prepare dinner, leaving Ellone, Zell, Quistis and Squall to construct a tower out of books on the floor. Irvine was still asleep on the pillows.

Selphie and Seifer hunkered behind a bed and Seifer plopped the bucket between them.

"Okay, this is your quest. You gotta convince Quistis to take the lid off this bucket," he whispered at her.

"Quisty? Why?"

"Cause she told on me about puttin' glue in Zell's shoes."

_(Heh, that's pretty funny. Sorry, Zell.)_

Young-Selphie seemed to think so too as she stifled a giggle into her sleeve, which seemed to please Seifer.

"I had to go without dessert for a whole week! Quistis is lame!"

"Laaame!"

"Anyways, Quistis won't take it from me. You gotta do it."

"Okay, crime-partner! What's in the bucket?"

"A big surprise!"

"Okay!"

It wasn't that Selphie wanted to hurt anyone, old-Selphie reflected. More that she was bored and everything Seifer did usually led to mayhem and fun respectively, which was usually worth a scolding. Not that little-Selphie was thinking of a scolding. Kids rarely had much foresight or opinion on consequence. Especially on boring rainy days.

So Selphie picked up the bucket (oddly heavy) and edged her way to the middle of the unsuspecting group.

"Um… what's that?" Zell asked nervously. Poor Zell. The victim of so many partner-in-crime pranks.

"It's a surprise!" Selphie said with a wide, benign smile. "For Quisty!"

"For me?" Quisitis asked, naturally suspicious. "Who from?"

"Uh… I dunno. Me. I guess. It's girl stuff." Quistis loved girl stuff. She paid especial attention to her long gold-spun hair and today she wore a purple bow as a hairband.

"What kind of girl stuff?" she asked, intrigued.

"Ya know… dresses and dolls, I guess." Selphie, on the other hand, wasn't very girly at all. "Just open it!"

Ellone gave Selphie a look, but before anyone could stop her, Quistis lifted the lid off the bucket an inch to peep inside.

And an inch was all the four Gigan Toads needed.

Gigan Toads could grow to the size of a Labrador and could spit water and cast status afflictions. They weren't strong, but a definite nuisance and certainly a threat to young children. However, these froglets were only the size of a hand and all they could do was –

The Gigan froglet shot a stream of water right in Quistis' face. She tried to scream but it came out as gurgle as she frantically clawed at the water to stem its flow. She was drenched within seconds.

Selphie yelped in surprise and glee as four froglets hopped to freedom and began defending their newfound territory with shoots of water. Ellone and Quistis clambered atop a nearby bed, screaming and clutching each other as one particularly angry froglet gave chase. Zell curled into a ball on the floor and cried while another frog sat on his back and did its best impression of a decorative fountain. Squall did his best to shield himself with a pillow while crying for Sis, and Irvine got a very rude and wet awakening from another.

Selphie fell about in fits of giggles, danced in the water shoots and tried to catch the slimy devils to poke their bulbous eyes, all the while chorused by Seifer's guffaws while he chose to stay hidden.

"Selphie!"

The water shoots stopped. The froglets went oddly quiet and still. Matron stood in the door with a wooden spoon in one hand and a flour-smeared apron tied around her waist. She waited for an explanation.

Selphie did her best. "Um… I… thought they could be… pets?"

Matron looked at her with exasperation, then gathered the curiously subdued froglets into her arms and released them out the window. She turned around with her hand on her hips, surveyed the drenched play area and the crying children.

"Selphie, where did you get those toads from?"

"Um…"

"Did you go outside?"

Selphie shook her head. "I didn't!"

"It's not safe out there," Matron said forcefully. "You could have been swept away by the sea or fallen on a slippery rock. The storm is _dangerous_, Selphie. I specifically told you not to go outside." She sighed. "I'm afraid you're going to have to be confined to the dormitories all day tomorrow, with no dessert or stories after dinner."

"Nooooo!" Selphie wailed. "Buh-buh but I… I… "

"It was me, Matron."

Seifer emerged from behind the bed, looking petulant and not very sorry. He trudged into Matron's line of fire with his eyes cast down. "I got 'em from outside."

"Well." Matron crossed her arms. "I appreciate your honestly, Seifer. What am I going to do with the pair of you, honestly? Look at this mess!" She sighed. "Both of you will be grounded for half the day tomorrow and I expect this place to look spotless by the end of the night. You'll have to wash the bedsheets tomorrow. That wasn't a very nice trick to play on your friends, so say sorry."

"Sooo-rrrry," Seifer and Selphie chimed.

"Alright now, children, you'll all need to take baths." Matron began to herd her sniffling brood out the door. "You two start cleaning up, please."

Alone now, Seifer and Selphie looked at each other morosely.

"We got busted," Seifer said.

"Yeah. We always get busted."

"I got in trouble again…"

"Me too."

Silence.

"It was pretty funny though."

"Hee hee hee."

"Heh heh heh."

"Yoo should really –"

* * *

Somewhere in Esthar, Ellone woke up, and Selphie returned to the future only to find the knot in her stomach had grown larger.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed so far. It's also being posted on archiveofourown, if you frequent there more often than here. Enjoy!_

* * *

**CHAPTER FOUR**

* * *

Seifer looked mildly surprised when Selphie plonked a paper cup of coffee in front of him, but that was hardly surprising considering she had walked straight through the security barriers and was probably his first and only visitor.

"I just went with regular joe 'cause I have no idea how you take it," she said conversationally. She plucked three packets of sugar from the top pocket of her bright yellow jacket and dumped them all into her double expresso. "I got three more where these came from. You want sugar?"

He eyed the packets dubiously. "You, caffeine and sugar should not be a combination."

"Huh? Why?"

Seifer downed his coffee. "Fuck me, I needed that." He hesitated. "Thanks."

"'Welcome." She sat down on the edge of his bed and studied his cell. It was very… Estharian. A far cry from D-District prison with its opaque blue walls and force-field door (now deactivated). There was a bed that looked way too small for him, a table and chair, a latrine and a sink, and… that was it.

"Wowsers, you must be bored," she said.

Seifer stared into the bottom of his empty cup. "It's preferable to the tests, trust me."

"Oh yeah? Are they bad?"

He gestured vaguely. "Just boring, really. Makin' me junction, unjunction, measuring brain frequency and responses. I even opted in for stimulation tests and cardio obs, just to break the tedium."

"Oooh, did they cut you up? Set you on fire?"

"No, you fuckin' weirdo. Controlled electrocution."

"Oooh, now there's some irony."

"Yeah, yeah." He eyed her suspiciously. "Did Rinoa send you here?"

Selphie stopped swinging her legs and blinked at him. "Hah? No. Just thought you might want some coffee."

"…And Odine just let you in here to bring me coffee?"

"Nope! I disabled the security system and magicked the guards." Selphie beamed. "I was kinda bored at the palace too. Apparently, I have to tone down the stalking of Sir Laguna, and Irvy is doin' recon for Squall, and Rinny is having bonding time with her future father in-law soooo…."

Seifer leaned back in his seat. "So the rumours were true."

"About Squall's dad?"

Seifer snorted, glancing askance. "Of course _he'd_ have a father."

Selphie brushed that aside. "How's the hollowing going? I asked Sis about it, but she doesn't know anything, either."

"Why would she? She's not a sorceress. She could've been something, maybe, but Cid and Edea ensured she stayed useless."

"That's not nice," Selphie chided. "She's useful in her own way… She helps us remember the stuff we've forgotten."

"If I don't remember it then it ain't worth remembering."

Selphie got up and punched him lightly on the arm. "Sheesh, why d'ya gotta be such a bummer? Hey, I know! Let's bust outta here!"

Seifer pinned her with an incredulous look. "Were you hit on the head as a child?"

"Probably. Probably by you. Multiple times."

"I opted to be here," Seifer said slowly. "Because I owe Rinoa."

Selphie shifted her weight and clasped her arm. "Well, yeah but like… this hollowing thing. Even if there is a cure, it might take years. You wanna spend years in this cell, day after day enduring all those tests? That sounds borrrring. Like, what if you die here? Odine might freeze your body and do weird stuff to it!"

Seifer ran a hand over his face. He looked tired. She should've bought a third coffee.

Eventually, he stood up. "Fine. I wanna know what they've found so far anyway."

"Woo-hoo! Partners in crime!"

Seifer pinned her with an irritated look but chose not to comment.

She followed him out of the cell, and they got as far as the first set of control terminals before the walls of the prison turned from blue to red and a blaring alarm cut through the silence.

"Tee hee, the guards must've come out of the Sleep spell!" Selphie said, entirely unapologetic.

Seifer rolled his eyes and carried on walking. "Y'know, I'm pretty sure you could've pulled your rank and they would've just let you in. Now you've damaged Garden's reputation and they might limit your access."

"Naaah, that won't happen. 'Cause then Rinoa wouldn't come back and Doc Odd is all about one-on-one Rinny time. And SeeD for that matter. We're kinda his guineapigs for his paramagic experiments, y'know." Selphie briefly stopped by a control panel and punched in a few numbers, which stopped the blaring alarm. "Besides, this is waaay more fun. And Doc Odd is kind of a grade A nerd so…."

Seifer acknowledged that with grunt. Though after watching Selphie hack into the mainframe to disable the alarm, he added, "If anyone's a nerd here, it's you."

"I'm a techy," Selphie rectified. "Totally different."

"You keep tellin' yourself that, Messenger Girl."

They managed to progress surprisingly far before several Estharian soldiers caught up with them. Selphie chirpily explained they were looking for Odine, and they begrudgingly agreed to take them on the condition Seifer was handcuffed, and Seifer even more begrudgingly let them and smirked when he noticed the guard's trembling hands.

Odine was unamused by the interruption, but largely relieved his experiment wasn't out for blood. He sat in a levitating chair that he manoeuvred between four enormous holoscreens and various keyboards and personalogs, all of which projected an inconceivable amount of data; graphs, lines of numbers, disjointed notes and diagrams ran at a dizzying rate across every surface Selphie set eyes on.

"The analysis iz not complete," he raged, "and interruptions do not hasten ze process. You vant half answers? Speculations? No. You demand facts from Odine but hinder his work. Return to your cell at once! And you, girl – disappear back to Esthar."

Selphie ignored him. "What have you found out so far? Can you cure it?"

Odine flapped his hands in such agitation Selphie almost thought he would fly away like some weird owl-Odine bird. An Owldine? And Odowl?

"H-how do you expect me to concoct a cure so rapidly? Do you even know what 'it' is? No. No! Stupid girl! Leave me in peace to –"

"Tell me what you know so far," Seifer demanded. "I ain't got nothin' to lose, but you do. Reckon you can still type with broken fingers?"

Odine ogled in disbelief. "You threaten Odine? Foolish boy, biting ze hand zat feeds you. It matters not to ze Sorceress whether you live or die; there's no motivation to find a cure in _your_ lifetime. However short zat might be."

Selphie felt that knot in her stomach again. She closed the space between herself and the doctor, breaking and redefining the rules of personal space as she placed her hands on either side of the chair's arms to lean in close. She smiled a smile so sweet Hyne himself might have been fooled.

"Demotivation is such a bummer. Maybe I can help encourage you to work faster? It'll be fun! For me, anyway."

"You… you can't… you wouldn't do zat. I'm too valuable!"

Selphie straightened and tapped her lip with a finger. "Yeaaah, you're right. Intimidating uncooperative old men isn't in my SeeD contract. But Rinoa, on the other hand, isn't part of SeeD and I have it down for a _fact_ that she does not appreciate tardiness –"

"Alright, alright." Just the mention of Rinoa's name had caused a line of sweat to appear on Odine's brow. Clearly, he had difficulty differentiating Rinoa from her malevolent predecessors. "I'll tell you everything on ze condition zat you leave me alone afterwards. Though I am telling you, I do not have a cure yet. I can only tell you vat I've learned so far."

Selphie sat cross legged on the floor in front of him. "Woop! Story time!"

Seifer remained standing, his expression carefully blank.

"Do you know where ze GFs come from?" Odine asked.

"Well, everywhere, duh," Selphie said. "We just find 'em layin' around. Finders keepers!"

"No, stupid girl. Originally, where are they originally from?"

Selphie cocked her head and guessed. "The… moon? Like all the other monsters?" Thinking about it, she'd never bothered to ask the GFs their origins. Currently, she had Alexander junctioned in her mind, and he seemed unbothered by the question. She thought she caught an idea of mountains from him, but nothing solid. He wasn't the most talkative of GFs, anyway.

"What do they teach you in those silly Gardens?" Odine twittered. "To understand ze GFs origins iz to understand ze source of magic itself. How can you wield a weapon without understanding its workings first? Oh, nevermind. It iz unimportant. Magic originates from ze moon, but ze GFs do not. They were –"

"They were made by the sorceresses," Seifer said.

Odine nodded, pleased. "Yes! A sorceress' magic is magic in its purest form, and its power iz such zat she can create new matter. Ze GFs are physical manifestations of her magic, sourced from her experiences and memories, moulded for whatever purpose suits her at ze time. Often ze GFs take on ze personalities of their creator, but to survive they must adapt, and to adapt they take on information presented to zem. With zat information, they grow stronger and so does ze magic zat flows through our world."

"Information?" Selphie mused. "You mean… our memories? They take our memories so they can evolve? Wow, I didn't know that. How did you know, Seifer? Did Ultimecia tell you that?"

Seifer said nothing, just nodded at Odine to continue.

"Magic in its purest form cannot exist on our world without something to bind it. There must be a link zat grounds ze magic to this world, be it a rock, a monster, a person… The GFs are pure magic, and so they cannot exist without a form on this world to tether zem. If they lose this link, ze magic will return to its cycle and its source respectively; to ze origin of all life. However, ze seed of magic inside of a sorceress iz an exception. It cannot return to ze source, and so it must be passed along, over and over, until there iz not a single vessel left for it to ground itself in. And then who knows what would happen to it?

"To be a knight iz not just a title," Odine continued. "It iz a magical link cast by ze sorceress. There have been no cases of the link being reversed. To link them together, ze sorceress infuses her magic into ze mind. You could say…" He rolled his wrist. "She junctions him to her. Or junctions her magic to him. As you know, humans are capable of wielding paramagic, but the human mind iz too fragile to hold pure magic. The GFs could easily overwhelm a person's mind, though if they did zat they would lose their link to this world, unravel and likely return to ze source."

"It has happened," Seifer said. "There was a kid in B-Garden, eight or nine years ago. He was messing around with junctioning, abusing his GF. Cid tried to discipline him, but he wouldn't stop. Then one day they found him… He'd had a fit or something. Blood running from his ears, nose, eyes. He'd torn out his own hair and bitten through his tongue."

"Gross," Selphie said.

"Cid covered it up, but I found the files," Seifer said contemptuously. "He always left important shit lyin' around his office. Kadowaki described it as 'a lapse of control resulting in total severance of the junctioning bond.'"

"I mean, we're generally taught not to annoy the magical beings squatting in our heads," Selphie added, tapping her temple. "Common sense."

"Anyway," Odine barked, clearly not used to being interrupted. "Ze powers of Hyne iz so great even ze sorceress iz at risk of being consumed. Afterall, she iz only human. So she must find a second vessel to ground her magic. In flowery terms: a knight. But such an overwhelming infusion of pure magic irreversibly alters ze brain constructs, so she maintains them through even more magic, lest ze vessel deteriorate. However, when ze sorceress dies, ze knight cannot pass on her seed of magic like she can and ze human body cannot sustain it without ze sorceress' help, so ze magic begins to erode ze vessel, consuming first ze mind and then ze body."

That knot in Selphie's belly had returned. "So, it's… what? Killing him?"

Odine looked cross. "No, no. Zat wouldn't do at all. Ze magic needs its vessel to sustain itself for as long as possible – to protect itself. So, it eats away anything superfluous – emotion, memories and such – and leaves behind ze fighting instinct so ze vessel can protect itself and ze magic respectively. A Hollow Knight. A somewhat useless, unthinking fighting machine."

"Oh," Selphie said. "So… how do we like… unjunction Ultimecia's magic or whatever? That would stop the hollowing, right?"

"You can't," Seifer deadpanned. "It's too assimilated."

He didn't sound defeated. Not even sad or frightened. He just sounded resigned. Like he'd accepted his fate. But Selphie didn't accept that. They'd done way crazier things, and besides, they'd defeated Ultimecia once, they could do it again. To her magic, anyway.

"There's gotta be a way to get rid of it!" Selphie exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "Couldn't we just… Dispel it?"

"It's not a status effect, idiot," Seifer said.

"Magic cannot be erased," Odine said. "It iz energy, it iz infinite. It can be contained, used, recycled, transmuted, but never destroyed. When a human iz tainted to such a level by pure magic, they have become something else, something different. It iz… complex."

"But there must be a way." The voice belonged to Rinoa. She had appeared at some point in the corner of Odine's office, wearing a formal blue dress and heels, like she'd just left a function or meeting.

"Ah! S-sorceress! I apologize I thought –"

Rinoa waved him into silence. Probably literally. She did that now and insisted it was an accident, but Selphie wasn't so sure. "Magic can be moved between different vessels. GFs can be unjunctioned. Magic can be transmuted. This is more complicated, but not that different."

"The issue iz the destruction of matter in the wake of its excision," Odine said. "I could not forcibly extract ze magic no more than I could forcibly extract yours, sorceress. For such powerful magic to be excised would take nothing short of death of ze vessel."

Rinoa gnawed on her lip, then nodded resolutely. "No. There has to be a way. Edea lost her powers but still lived. We just gotta keep trying."

"Some problems can't be solved with just good intentions and hard work," Seifer said derisively. "Just let it go."

"It's not for you," Rinoa said. "I did this to Squall too. I… didn't mean to. I was stupid. I didn't know what it meant to let him be my knight. And now he holds some of my power too."

Selphie reached out and gripped Rinoa's arm wordlessly. Rinoa was two parts good intentions, one part naivety and one part pure resolve. That concoction generally meant she believed she could get anything done if she worked hard enough.

For Selphie's part, she just wanted something to believe in.

"We can totally figure it out," Selphie said with a bright smile.

"Yeah." Rinoa turned to Odine. "I'm happy with everything you've found out so far. I'm sure if anyone can find a way to shift the magic in Seifer's brain, you can."

Odine bobbed his head. "You flatter me, sorceress."

Selphie fist pumped. "Yeah! If you can find a way to turn Ellone's power into a machine that transports evil sorceress' minds back in time so they can compress time and space, this should be a piece of evil-scientist cake!"

Rinoa supressed a giggle, then turned to Seifer. "Go back to your room and be nice, okay?"

"It's not a room, it's a prison cell," Seifer snapped. "And I'm always nice."

This time is was Selphie's turn to suppress a giggle, but Rinoa soon turned a bossy eye on her too. "And you. No more prison breaks! He's in there to protect others. You heard what Odine said."

"As ze magic consumes its vessel Seifer exhibits more acts of uncontrolled violence," Odine said, eyeing Seifer cautiously. "He remembers nothing after ze act."

Selphie cocked her head curiously. "Huh. He's been fine around me."

"I believe it's still in early stages," Odine explained. "Our experiments thus far have shown zat magical stimulation accelerates the hollowficiation, causing a temporary lapse of lucidity and a spike in violence. Though as it advances, he will exhibit violence sporadically and spontaneously."

"It's not good for him to be around GFs. Or me, for that matter," Rinoa added.

A squad of guards came to escort Seifer back to his cell, and Selphie watched him depart pensively. He didn't seem to have an ounce of regret in him. He didn't even seem troubled by his hollowfication.

He deserved this. He deserved to suffer. At least, that's what she kept telling herself. She knew she should hate him, or at the very least resent him, but for some reason she didn't, and that bothered her, too.

_Everything bothers me at the moment,_ she mused. _Maybe I should've taken that vacation time…_

And then it came to her. The most batty, impulsive, poorly-thought-through idea she'd maybe ever had. It made no sense, and perfect sense. She spun on the spot, stopping right in front of Rinoa.

"Rinny, I got a crazy idea! Hear me out?"

Rinoa looked at her warily. "Okaaay. Now?"

"Over coffee!" Selphie chirped.

Rinoa pawed her fancy clutch bag and pulled out her vidphone. After scrolling through a few messages, she nodded. "Squall is still busy and isn't expecting me to check in for a while yet. I don't have any meetings scheduled either." She grinned. "Let's go!"

* * *

Selphie and Rinoa were two of the most recognisable women in the world, especially the latter, so it was hard doing 'normal' things now, things they'd taken for granted before the war. Rinoa was a walking security hazard; a target for hired assassins and anti-sorceress groups that probably kept Squall awake with worry, despite her remarkable and newfound ability to maintain a constant Shell and Protect. Regardless, it was a pain walking around nowadays. Rinoa had cut her hair short and dyed out the blonde streaks, and Selphie had begrudgingly retired her bouncy hair style and adopted a pair of space-buns (as dramatic as her last hairstyle but at least not as recognisable). Out in the streets of Esthar, they both wore sunglasses and plain clothes just in case. Rinoa pushed her hair under a baseball cap that read 'TIMBER TIGERS' and Selphie wore a sweater that said 'DELING UNIVERSITY '08'.

They picked a café not far from the main shopping parade. Its ultramodern architecture was offset by colourful cacti and wicker chairs, and the scent of incense entwined pleasantly with fresh coffee. There were no waiters; Selphie tapped her order into a holoscreen, and two minutes later a steaming mug of hot cocoa with extra whipped cream was delivered on the back of a miniature drone.

"Thanks!" Selphie told it before giving it a spritely pat on the head.

Angelo yipped enviously while Rinoa batted Selphie's hand away from the drone with a giggle. "You'll break it!"

"I think it's cute."

"Give me an old-fashioned puppy any day," Rinoa said. She stared out the window at the bustling city and her spoon continued to stir her mocha on its own after she moved away her hand. She didn't seem to notice.

Selphie tugged her gaze away from the magic-moving-spoon. "You don't like Esthar?"

"Mmm… It's just so… _busy_. Do you know it doesn't get dark here? Not properly. There're always neon lights, flashing signs… You can't even see the stars. It makes Deling look like a back-water village." She sighed. "I miss Timber."

"You don't like Garden?"

"I didn't say that! Garden is fine, I suppose. I'm just happy being with Squall, for now."

Selphie drew a smiley face in her whipped cream. At length, she said, "I miss Trabia."

"Why don't you ask Squall to post you at Trabia Garden for a while?" Rinoa suggested. "He's been thinking of setting up a long-term team there as a sign of good will. You know, manual aid, better communications, that sort of thing. Plus, I'm sure they could do with the help rebuilding."

"Well, sure. It's just… I don't miss Garden." She searched for the words. That was weird. Words usually came easy to her. "I miss… I miss _Trabia_. I miss the pines and the snow and the cold. I miss something that… that isn't Garden. Even though I've only ever known Garden." She searched Rinoa's face. "What is that? What does that mean? How can you miss something you don't have?"

Rinoa leaned back in her chair and her gaze caught on the spoon. She plucked it out of the coffee and set it aside. "You want to leave Garden."

"Balamb? I do have my vacation time –"

"I mean SeeD."

Selphie blinked at Rinoa, then looked down in time to watch her whipped cream smiley face melt into the hot chocolate. She absently dunked a packet of sugar into it. "I don't know. Maybe. Is that awful? Am I a bad person?"

"No, no, of course not –"

"It's just that since the war I don't even know why I'm still fighting. I don't even understand what SeeD is for. Why was I fighting in the first place? It feels like my whole life was planned by someone else and…" She rubbed her eyes. "Hehehe, I sound like Squall. Maybe I'm overthinking things."

Rinoa sipped her coffee and rubbed Angelo's ears. After a moment, she said, "You should go to Trabia. As a… an unofficial envoy of B-Garden, maybe? Or just, like, as a morale booster? See how you feel, take it day by day. Squall won't mind."

"Xu would mind," Selphie said grimly. "I – us – the Orphanage Gang… we're Garden's big earners."

Rinoa wrinkled her nose and waved a hand. "Who cares what Xu thinks?"

"She is Headmistress, Rinny. Besides, I can't let B-Garden down like that!" Selphie took a deep breath. "Actually, I was thinking… I was thinking about taking Seifer with me."

Rinoa set her coffee down with a clunk. "What!?"

Selphie dumped another sugar packet into her hot chocolate. "I know, I know. It's crazy. But! He's dangerous, right? And super strong? So he shouldn't stay here. What if he got out? He could hurt people!"

"Those are very specific reasons for why he _should_ stay here! Esthar has the best security in the world! Could you defeat him alone if he became fully hollow? Would T-Garden even accept him? He… he blew them up! Also, we need him at Odine's so we can research hollowficiation."

"I'll bring him to Odine's once a week," Selphie said. "Odine has a ton of information to work with already, plus from now on he's just working on an extraction process, right? He won't need Seifer all the time. And we'll… we'll set up security measures. I mean, I'm ninety-nine percent sure I can take 'im on, but we can totally think of some back up plans. And actually, I wasn't planning on going to T-Garden…"

"What do you mean?"

"T-Garden owns a bunch of cabins up in the mountains. They were used as training outposts, but they've been out of use since Garden got bombed. We used to have crazy parties up there, back when we were cadets. They're proper out of the way of civilisation, have good communication lines and are kitted out to outlast the Trabian winters –"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Hah?"

Rinoa frowned a small, puzzled frown. "For him. With him. I… don't understand. He blew up Trabia Garden, killed your friends, betrayed everyone. You didn't even know him at Balamb Garden, not like Squall, Quistis and Zell. Even I have more of a connection with him because of… you know."

Selphie opened her mouth, shut it again. She bobbed a shoulder and managed a half-smile. "I dunno! I guess… I can't stop seeing him as part of the Orphanage Gang, y'know? Sure, he's a massive d-bag but he's been dealt some bad hands too. This idea of him sittin' in a cell waiting to die… it doesn't sit right with me. I also think he'll go crazy way faster!" She nodded resolutely. "He can't go to T-Garden, but maybe he could help in other ways. He's paying for everything he's done, but he hasn't made up for it. If that makes sense."

Rinoa stared at her for a long while, then let out a gusty sigh. "He might end up driving you insane, you know that?"

"I'm already insane," Selphie said seriously. "He should be more scared of me!"

"I suppose Squall could draft up another fake mission." Rinoa tapped her nails against the side of the mug. "Helping the rebuilding of T-Garden, something like that. And it would keep Seifer well out of the way. I mean, he might eventually be discovered in Esthar, and it would be such a shame for Esthar and Galbadia's political climate to sour so soon. And I would hate to drag Laguna into this too…"

Selphie fist pumped the air. "Woo-hoo! It's decided!"

"Well, I have to run it past Squall first…"

"He'll defo say yes! Squall's a real trooper like that."

"He's a rationalist. As long as all the details add up then he'll be satisfied." Rinoa eyed her again, a tad suspiciously. "He'll be sad to see you leave, though. I'll be sad. Everyone'll be sad! But hopefully a break in Trabia will make everything clearer. I want you to be happy. It's just unfortunate you'll be bunking with Seifer…"

"Feh, he's a kitten," Selphie said dismissively. "Let's hope he doesn't mind the cold!"

Rinoa grinned. "I think the cold will be the last of his worries."


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

* * *

Seifer was good at retreating into his own mind. He'd never considered why, just labelled himself as a dreamer and left it at that. But truthfully, it could be traced back to both Garden's disassociation training and his own constant battle with feeling unhappy.

Squall had been unhappy at Garden, but unlike Seifer, he had seesawed between letting his depression consume him entirely and smothering the depression with duty. Seifer wouldn't fall into something as boring as depression, or submit to duty. Instead, he paved over such an embarrassing emotion with ideas and dreams, distracting himself by imagining a better future.

Garden was his home, school, work, family and social life; it was everything. It was mundane and routine with a single goal at the end of a single path: SeeD. And even that was someone else's dream. Orphaned, broke, alone, he'd had no choice but to walk that path, tolerate Garden's rules, fill his time with honing abilities that came naturally to him. Honestly, he hated Garden, but he knew deep in his bones that he was born to be a fighter. The same way he knew he was born for greater things than SeeD. He would construct his own path, his own destiny, and he felt that these dreams made him privy to something none of the other mindless drones at Garden could see: freedom, identity, control.

And now?

He'd lost almost everything. His self-constructed destiny wasn't actually self-constructed at all. It was a façade created by Cid, Edea, Ultimecia… just a pawn in a greater scheme. That wasn't real freedom. That wasn't real control. And now he had less than what he started with. His path seemed paved towards an early death of Ultimecia's making. His freedom was in the hands of whatever authority caught up with him first.

Through his years in Garden, his unhappiness had been diluted by his dreams, and often he retreated into his head to reassure himself that the unhappiness was temporary. Every failure and scolding was meaningless in light of what awaited him; everyone else was just too stupid to see it.

But now he couldn't even retreat into his own mind. It was an inferno of dark magic that burnt to the touch. Without a bright future to distract him, he was forced to confront his failures, stupidity and weakness.

He didn't trust his memories, either. Although they were no longer clouded by GF fog, they were warped by magic instead. That same magic gave him power – he no longer needed a GF to cast – but sometimes it showed him terrible things: the past, present and future all muddled together. The magic picked at his mind as though it was a thing long dead. It was driving him crazy, literally and figuratively.

He needed out of this cell. ASAP. And because of that, he was much more compliant than usual when a squad of Estharian soldiers came to collect him. The isolation of his cell was such that he'd come to look forward to the tests. As much as he detested Odine, he was a wealth of knowledge when it came to magic, sorceresses and knights. He'd learned more in the last few weeks than he had done through his entire Balamb education.

This time the soldiers didn't take him to the labs. He was taken outside of the compound entirely, where the imposing bulk of the Ragnarok squatted on the parched ground like a snoozing dragon. They marched him to the boarding ramp where Squall and Rinoa were waiting.

A habitual ball of bile rose in Seifer's throat on seeing Squall. The last time he'd seem him was on the Lunatic Pandora, a lifetime ago. The old hate and disdain washed over him, even moreso now, seeing him in the uniform of SeeD Commander, a knight, with Rinoa on his arm.

He'd never felt jealousy for Squall; Seifer wasn't jealous of anyone. But he felt it was important to be better than Squall, especially when he seemed to always be snapping at his heels in terms of talent and progression. Without realising, he used Squall as a means of measuring his own success, and so he'd always wanted to push Squall, make him better and stronger and tougher, so he would exist to constantly challenge and better Seifer's own development.

Seifer was still better than Squall at most things, but somehow Seifer felt he was snapping at Squall's heels now.

Not that he'd let him know that.

"Well, well. If it isn't Puberty Boy, torn away from his busy schedule of sulking. Sorry, I suppose I should be calling you _Commander_ Puberty now."

Squall's expression didn't change. He held out a thin silver wrist cuff. "Put this on."

Seifer balked, an entirely ingrained response to any sort of order, especially coming from Squall. However, Rinoa caught his eye behind Squall's back, so he at least made a show of inspecting it. Up close, he noticed a series of circuits and a flashing red light.

"What is it?"

"A tracking device," Squall said, "and an explosive that's remotely detonated. Not enough to harm anyone else, and it might not kill you if help comes fast enough, but it will definitely put you out of commission."

Seifer scowled. He didn't put it on. "Why the precaution? They said they'd gas the chamber if I turned and they've got at least one squad on me at all times."

"You're being transferred," Squall said. His characteristic monotone was slightly strained, like he didn't entirely agree with the idea.

"You're takin' me to B-Garden?"

"No. You're…" He put a hand on his hip and looked sideways. "It's… complicated."

"You're going to Trabia," Rinoa said.

Seifer frowned. "T-Garden?"

"No," Squall said. "Just Trabia."

Seifer looked between Squall and Rinoa. "What the fuck is this about? You gonna drop me off on a mountain or somethin'?"

Rinoa clasped her hands and twirled on her heel. "Not exaaaclty…."

"For the record, I don't agree with this," Squall said stiffly. "Not because I want you in a cell, but because it puts one of my SeeDs… one of my friends… at risk. Direct, unreasonable risk. It's not a logical choice Garden would support except…"

Rinoa winked. "Women are very convincing."

Squall sighed.

Seifer's anger grew hotter. Nothing made him angrier than a lack of control. After all, he had chosen to be arrested by Galbadia, chosen to accept the death penalty, then agreed to go to Esthar. But this choice seemed entirely at someone else's liberty.

"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On."

"Seems like there's still one person left in the world who has faith in you," Squall said without any real malice. "Can't guarantee your sanity at the end of it, though."

Rinoa elbowed him, then glanced over her shoulder. She gestured to someone out of sight, then the Tilmitt girl came bounding down the ramp. Seifer noted with growing trepidation that she was wearing thermal gear, snow boots and ear muffs shaped like bunnies despite the desert heat.

"So he agreed?" she chirped. "WOO-HOOO! It's gonna be like summer camp! But with snow! And explosives! Oh my gosh – we can be _bunk buddies_!"

Seifer speared Squall with a look. "You cannot, you _will_ not, do this -"

"You don't have a choice, Seifer. You're a –"

"You are _not_ ditching me in the middle of an ice wasteland with this sugar-snorting mentally-deranged–"

Rinoa jabbed a finger at him. "Heeeey, that's not nice!"

"You are being given an unprecedented offer," Squall said testily.

"Although you do have a choice," Tilmitt said. The group looked at her. "I mean, he does? He doesn't _have_ to come. He can stay here instead, right? in the lab? Or he can come with me to Trabia."

They looked at Seifer. He kept his expression carefully blank while he mulled over his options. Limited options, but options nonetheless. This marginal control eased his anger a little.

Ultimately, the pro of going to Trabia was a major one: his freedom was far more negotiable. Plus, the Tilmitt girl seemed far easier to manipulate than the Estharian soldiers.

"Fine. I'll go."

"WWOOO-HOOOO!" Tilmitt jumped three foot off the ground, then literally cartwheeled back up the ramp.

Seifer glared at Squall. "If I find Zell in my suitcase, I swear to Hyne I will purposely come back from the dead to decorate my coffin with your entrails, _Commander_."

Squall just sighed heavily and pointed at the wrist cuff. "Put it on your right hand."

"And for the record, you should probably start being nicer to Selphie," Rinoa added. "She has the key and the remote for the detonator."

Seifer locked the cuff onto his wrist. "Of _course_ she does."

* * *

The world transitioned beyond the Ragnarok's windows from sun-burnt sienna to pearly white, where pine forests and mountains loomed over settlements barely seen beneath chimney smoke and an ungodly amount of snow. Seifer looked on wordlessly as they passed over the ruined husk of Trabia Garden, a carapace of some dead crustacean wedged between the mountains. The old building had been largely demolished and the new Garden was coming along nicely on a site a little further along the valley. It was haloed by Estharian hovercrafts, missionaries aiding the reconstruction or new technology gifted by President Loire.

The Ragnarok landed in a forested valley between mountains so tall their peaks were lost to fog. Seifer stepped out onto the boarding ramp, squinting into the glare of the snow, and zipped the collar of his thermal jacket all the way to the top. The skies were clear, but that didn't stop the biting wind from stinging whatever bare skin it could reach.

"This is Mount Dena," Tilmitt said, making a sweeping gesture at a mountain. "Or Mount Death, to the locals. It's where us T-Garden cadets did most of our training! Don't worry though, we won't be hiking up the mountain. Our cabin is at the base, just inside the forest."

Seifer wasn't remotely worried about hiking. He was too busy contemplating the possibility of murdering his new 'bunk mate' before they reached the cabin. He'd tried to surreptitiously figure out where she was keeping the remote for the detonator, to no avail. No matter. He would find it eventually.

Rinoa and Squall lingered near the Ragnarok's exit. Rinoa threw her arms around the Tilmitt girl, getting watery eyed.

"I'm not going to try to talk you out of this," she said. "I get it. Squall gets it. Just… take as long as you need, 'kay?"

Tilmitt disengaged her arms and grinned. "I'll be fine!"

Squall said, "T-Garden knows you're stationed nearby and that you will be assisting Trabia as a sign of goodwill, non-pertaining to any B-Garden contract. I rebuffed detail requests, and they didn't seem to mind. I think they were just happy you're in the area."

"Thanks, Squall! You're the best! I owe ya."

Squall shook his head. "SeeDs are entitled to sabbatical leave. Consider this yours. I'm merely following protocol."

Seifer snorted and glanced at Rinoa. "That kind of romantic talk do it for you nowadays? Or is it just his winning personality?"

"You're hardly Mr Personality yourself," Rinoa retorted. "I'll be back to take you to Esthar next week."

Squall stepped towards him with a steely expression. "If anything happens to Selphie, the hollowing will be the least of your worries."

Seifer turned on his heel with a crude gesture. If he wasted any more time on these saps he was going lose whatever sanity he had left.

The Ragnarok whipped up a snowstorm as it took off and Seifer shielded his eyes to watch it disappear over the mountain range. There was a sense of finality in watching its departure but he was comforted by the knowledge that the decision to leave had been his. He was still in control.

"Oh, mogballs," Tilmitt said from behind him. "I forgot to set the autopilot. Maybe I should…? Aaaah, they'll be fine. Rinny can always teleport 'em. Okay! Let's get trekkin'! We wanna reach the cabin before nightfall. If you think this is cold, you'll change your opinion when it gets dark."

Seifer adjusted his gloves. "Ain't that bad."

Tilmitt grinned. "That's the spirit!"

Seifer allowed her to take the lead so he could set his feet to automatic and collect his thoughts. First, he analysed his surroundings. The mountain was a death-wish, though the forest might provide shelter and resources, albeit minimal. However, if he wanted to leave he wouldn't make it far without supplies and a sense of direction. He reckoned he could find T-Garden and from there Trabia City. He could dodge the authorities easily enough; he'd been doing it for four years. Alternatively, he could convince the Tilmitt girl to take him with her to town, incapacitate her, then find suitable transport to get the fuck outta dodge. He would find a way to disable or get rid of the tracker, even if it meant breaking his thumb to slide it off. And from there…

"You're thinkin' about running, right?" Tilmitt called over her shoulder. When he didn't respond, she continued, "I mean you can if you want, but I'd have to come with you. Trabia is nearby – I'm sure you've clocked it already – and I don't want any more people being hurt if you lose your noodles." She stopped talking for a moment to hop like a bunny through a particularly large snow pile before continuing. "You said it yourself anyway, right?" She deepened her voice, mimicking him: "'I don't wanna stop. I'm gonna keep running. I'm gonna make it to the end, to the goal.'"

He remembered the time on the Lunatic Pandora with unfortunate clarity. Couldn't forget it, even if he wanted to. It was weird having his words recited back to him. Why did she remember so clearly? He'd been more focussed on Squall and Rinoa at the time, but she had fought against him too, he supposed.

She peered at him under the fur-trimmed rim of her hat. "So what are you running from now? Or toward? What's the goal?"

She let that hang between them, apparently not expecting an answer, then turned and skipped away, kicking up powdery flurries of snow while singing, "I_ love the snow – snow is neat – it feels crunchy under feet_!"

Seifer watched her hop around. She really was batshit crazy, but at least she wasn't as bad as Zell.

Seifer had never been to Trabia before. It held little interest to him. Ancient history was found in Centra, complicated politics in Galbadia and advanced technology in Esthar. As far as he was concerned, Trabia was an icy wasteland of minimal relevance. If anything, destroying T-Garden might have been beneficial to the development of the back-water continent. War had an incredible way of accelerating progression. In fifty years they might even thank him.

_Not that I'll be around that long,_ he mused. And then he pushed the thought aside. No use lingering on it.

Their journey was broken only a few times by mesmerizes and gaylas. Seifer lingered out of harm's way, seething with frustration; Fujin and Raijin had his gunblade and he dared not use any magic lest he descend into a hollow state. He was however somewhat surprised by the ease with which Tilmitt defeated the beasts. Powerful spells flew from her fingers and her nunchaku dealt devastating blows while she whistled and danced her way through each foe like some nightmarish pixie.

"WHOOO-HOOOO! THERE IT IS!"

Seifer looked up to see Tilmitt running full pelt up a small incline. He traced her path and spied the cabin. It was straight out of one of those boring resort brochures he'd seen around Balamb; single storey, dark wood, a stone chimney, snow-capped roof trimmed with green pines. There was a shack half stocked with firewood to its right and in front of that a tree stump with an axe sticking out of it. There was literally nothing else.

He felt a rising sense of foreboding.

"I see you eyeing the axe, ya psycho!" Tilmitt yelled from the porch.

"I wasn't," Seifer snapped defensively, then was immediately annoyed at himself for rising to her taunt. "Just get in, already, it's fuckin' cold."

"Bring in some firewood!" Tilmitt yelled.

Seifer eyed the firewood, and ignored her. His boots tramped noisily up the wooden steps of the porch and he pushed aside the door the Tilmitt girl had just slammed in his face.

It was notably sparse inside. The front area was open plan; closest to the door was a poor excuse of a living area with a damp smelling couch, a mouldy rug and a stone fireplace wearing a shroud of spiderwebs. There were a few candles on the mantle and a picture of Trabia Garden hung on the wall above it.

On the opposite side of the room was a basic kitchenette, with pots and pans hanging from the ceiling and a table and chairs pushed below a single window. There was another door that lead to a back porch, and another couple of doors against the left wall. He cracked one open to find a rather unkempt bathroom, and the second one hid a bedroom. Seifer noted with great distaste that it had two bunks. Apparently, she hadn't been kidding when she'd called him a bunkmate. He hadn't slept in a bunk since he was a junior cadet.

"T-Garden really broke the bank when they made this outpost," he drawled.

"It's cosy!" Tilmitt beamed. She was inspecting the contents of the cupboard over the kitchenette. It looked empty.

"Cosy is a word for people who want to glorify a cramped, uncomfortable space," Seifer retorted. He walked up to the mantle, took the painting of Trabia Garden off the wall, snapped it in two over his knee and threw it into the fireplace. "There's your firewood."

Tilmitt's smile slid off her face like wet soap. He got a glimmer of satisfaction from that, but even moreso when he set it on fire with a burst of magic before she could snatch it away. She crouched in front of the fireplace and stared at the flames for a minute, an unreadable expression playing across her face. He waited for the inevitable outburst, fury and violence, but she stood up and clapped her hands instead.

"What do you like to eat? We should totally make smores! They're the best! Gooey marshmallows and chocolate, mmmm. I'm gonna run into town. D'ya wanna come?"

"Where is it?"

"A couple of miles away, not too far! Wanna get there and back 'fore it gets dark."

"I'll pass."

She cocked her head mischievously. "You don't wanna scout any potential getaways? Or are ya gonna run off into the mountain while I'm gone?"

Seifer shouldered past her. "If you don't bring back coffee I'll lock ya outside."

"Tch. Fine. See ya!"

He didn't turn until he heard the door slam, then he backtracked to the window to watch her go. She was literally skipping down some unseen path, talking to herself and picking up sticks to use as pretend swords against invisible foes. Holy fucking Hyne, she was all kinds of crazy. He was beginning to seriously question T-Garden's curriculum, or at least Edea's parenting.

He tested the lights and running water and flicked on the tankless water heater. He brought in firewood at his own discretion and dumped them into a basket beside the fireplace, then stripped the bunks of their sheets and threw them into the bathtub, scrubbed them with soap and hung them out to dry. The mattresses were miraculously well kept. He draped his coat and waterproof pant-covers on hangers near the fire, then sourced some cleaning supplies from under the sink and started to scrub the kitchen.

These processes were deeply ingrained into his being, courtesy of Garden. Line Six, Article 23: Secure a location and ensure it is safe and habitable to maintain health and minimalize distraction. Besides, everyone's personal dorms were subject to inspections on a weekly basis. If there was so much as a crease in the bedsheets, they were punished, so cleanliness became routine for cadets as young as seven. To live any other way was both inconceivable and unacceptable to Seifer.

Tilmitt returned during twilight hours, dragging a sled full of supplies. She had a crudely healed wound on her left arm that smelt like magic; whatever had attacked her had sliced through the sleeve of her thermal jacket. She seemed bright enough though, grinning at nothing and humming to herself. Seifer watched as she hefted the supplies from the sled to the kitchen, back and forth.

"You injure yourself?"

"Just a mesmerize," she chirped. "I forget they can detach their horn-blade thingys. Imagine if we could do that? Like, our arms just detach and fly at someone so we could punch 'em mid-air, like KPOW!" She dropped a sack of potatoes to demonstrate.

Seifer was fast withering inside. She was literally a female version of Zell. Maybe he should have stayed at the lab. He could always go back…

He stared across the pokey cabin. The window opposite framed the pines outside, and how the snow was turning violet in the dying light. It was a curious combination of stillness and life, death in a shimmering disguise. He supposed this place was a befitting place to die, though he'd have to find some way to pass the time. What did these Trabians do for fun anyway?

"Whisky?"

He turned to blink at the Tilmitt girl, wondering if he'd thought out loud. She was holding a clear bottle in one hand and a brown one in the other, contemplating the labels with pursed lips.

"Didn't know what ya like, so in the end I got the kind that makes ya insides warm." She dumped them into his hands then carried on unloading the supplies into the cupboards. "I didn't know what you liked at all actually. You should've come with. Although there's not a lot of choice this far up the mountains. We got the market leftovers. Mainly leeks and potatoes, carrots, cabbage, mesmerize steaks… that sorta thing. Although we can stock up during your trips to Esthar too. Man, look at the size of these leeks! They don't grow 'em like this in Balamb. Hee hee, I've kinda missed Trabian food. Did you know that -"

Seifer tuned out her rambling while he hunted down a tumbler from one of the cupboards. He washed it, poured himself a thumb of whiskey, then sat down on a wooden chair, leaning back so he could cross his feet on the table.

Outside, darkness was fast brewing and the light from the cabin threw squares of amber onto the snow. The forest was utterly dark, though he could make out monsters nosing through the brush, unbothered by the new residents of the cabin. He thought of the blue dragons and snow lions said to command the woods in these parts, and wondered if they'd bother them. He found these monsters a mild comfort though. These were foes he could see and fight, not witches from other times or alien magic in his mind.

He took a long drink. Tilmitt was right about one thing: the whisky was warming.

When he zoned back in she was still talking.

" – must be a Garden thing. Though I'm not complaining, I'm glad you've cleaned. There should be some fur throws in the cupboard as well, so we shouldn't be too cold at night. There's no heating but you'll be amazed how the fireplace warms the whole cabin. And there should be enough hot water for both of us – oh awesome, you switched it on already! If you do that every –"

Seifer sat forward and thunked his tumbler onto the table. "It's fine, Tilmitt. The cabin is fine. I'm not a fucking idiot, I can figure everything out."

The girl stared at him with that weird expression, the one he had difficulty reading. Her eyes were round and twinkling, and she wore an impish smile, yet it seemed… off. Was she annoyed? Upset? Ultimately, he didn't really care, so long as she shut up.

She unzipped her thermals and hung them on a clothes rack by the fire. She prodded the flames with an iron poker and threw on a log, then retrieved a tumbler from the cupboard, didn't bother washing it, then plonked herself on the chair next to him and poured herself a drink.

"This cabin was a Trabian training outpost," she said, "to toughen up the cadets. Survival expeditions I guess. This was a base, but we had to camp out as well, and track down blue dragons. I found my first GF out here…" She stared into her drink for a moment, then added brightly: "Anyways, we also came up here to party! Man, those were some messy parties, so far out of Garden. Yikes. Did you have anywhere like that in B-Garden?"

"I was the one stoppin' the parties," he told her imperiously.

"Oh right. The DC and all that." She made a face. "Welp, you're not head of anything anymore! You can live however you wanna. Away from Garden and Garden's rules…" She trailed off, the words perhaps not entirely aimed at him.

Seifer rolled his eyes and poured himself another drink. "If this is gonna descend into some psychiatry bullshit then please spare me. I get it: you're runnin' away from whatever problems you got and hidin' in a cabin in the middle of fuckin' nowhere. At least I have a valid reason for being here."

She stared at him, head cocked. "You really believe this is the end for you? Like, there's legit no way out of this hollowing thing?"

"I don't see one."

She jabbed a finger at him. "That's lame. I don't remember you being this lame. I get that defeat can humble a person but it shouldn't make them lame."

He spread his arms out. "What do you want from me?"

"The old fire! The old drive! Though not the crazy, murderous, magic-fuelled one. Like… the one from when we were kids. The one Rinoa saw."

He glared at her. That was one subject he didn't want to bring up. "You gotta big mouth, you know that?"

"So do you," she countered. "Honestly? I think you're gettin' what you deserve but… it still sucks. This hollow thing will eat you if you let it, and that's exactly what you're doing. You're letting it win. So just… find a new goal and fight for that. I'll help ya."

"Why?"

She shrugged blithely. "'Cause I need a goal too. It might as well be this."

"And then what? What happens when you cure me? Afterwards?"

"I dunno. I guess you get a second chance, right? And… maybe I do too. Eh. I haven't thought that far ahead. I'm just takin' it a day at a time. All I'm sayin' is I know you're not a bad guy, and maybe you've given up 'cause you feel bad about everything but rather than face your guilt you're –"

Seifer slammed his drink down a tad too hard and the tumbler cracked up the middle. "Hyne, will you shut up already? Tch. Broke my fuckin' glass."

"Still works though," Tilmitt said. "Bit like you, I suppose."

He stood up abruptly, chair screeching against the wooden floor. "Right. That's enough of your sad attempts to psycho-analyse me or whatever the hell you think you're doin'. I'm going to shower, then I'm going to sleep. I could die happy if I never hear your voice again, but as that's not gonna happen, I can settle for the rest of the night."

Tilmitt pouted at him, then yelled, "I shotgun top bunk!"

Seifer wondered if he could blame her murder on a blue dragon.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

* * *

Selphie awoke the next morning swaddled in a coat of bewilderment. She was too close to the ceiling on a mattress too hard, staring at cobwebbed eaves made of wood. Not B-Garden. Not T-Garden. Not Esthar. She smelt coffee, then abruptly remembered Seifer, and everything else fell back into place.

Contrary to popular belief, Selphie was not abuzz with all her usual vigour twenty-four seven, and in the mornings she was as sluggish as the best of people edging into their mid-twenties. Not that her hyperactivity was caffeine dependant, but three packets of sugar definitely helped her in the right direction, and the truth was, anyone might be hard pressed recognising her before her morning coffee.

She glanced at her vidphone. 6.53am. Almost an hour later than SeeD regulated wake up call, but heck, who did she have to discipline her now?

_Head of the Disciplinary Committee_, she thought with a grin.

Speaking of.

He wasn't in the living area, but there was a kettle of boiling water and an open packet of instant coffee on the side. She went to grab a mug, then noticed one already out. It was full of untouched, cold coffee, which was weird.

"…Seifer?"

No answer.

She knocked on the bathroom door. No answer.

Her tummy made a dive toward her feet. _Wow. He's actually run off. And before his morning coffee! Holy Hyne Squall is gonna kill me._

She backtracked towards the bedroom to grab her vidphone and the tracker respectively, when something caught her eye outside that stopped her in her tracks.

Through the window she spotted Seifer. He was standing half clothed with his back to the house, shin-deep in snow and seemingly indifferent to the small herd of mesmerizes nosing through the snow for food nearby.

_Whelp, that's not normal._

Alarm bells spiked her adrenaline as she sorted through her options with mercenary efficiency. She considered retrieving the detonator to the explosive device from its hiding place inside a box of tampons in the bathroom - the only place she was pretty sure a man wouldn't go – but she decided on a tactile approach first. Honestly, she was kinda curious.

She pulled on her snow boots then tramped noisily across the porch.

"Seifer…?"

He turned. His movements were odd – jerky and syrupy simultaneously. He looked much the same, except for a bizarre moment she thought she was seeing the snow behind him through two perfect holes in his head, until she realised his eyes were completely white.

She didn't hear the crunch of snow as he advanced, nor did she have time to brace for impact, but she caught a pungent waft of magic a second before he knocked her off her feet and sent her flying backwards. She hit the coat rack by the front door, smashing it to splinters, and as she struggled to free herself from a tangle coats and scarves, she had the right of mind to palm a jagged stake. He tried to grab her but caught an empty jacket instead and she managed to wriggle out of his grasp.

He abandoned the jacket and swung for her in a movement so fluid she barely ducked away in time. Selphie knew she couldn't match him in strength - he had a foot and maybe sixty pounds on her - so all she could do was duck and weave, wait for an opening, and pray to Hyne he tired before she did.

She was faster than him but not by much. He truly was a fighting prodigy, better than any of them, though it was never fighting prowess that let him down, only discipline. But now? The hollowing had discarded clumsy emotions and mutinous thoughts, leaving only the dangerous, trained killer underneath.

_Big yikes, _Selphie thought.

A sharp right hook sent her tumbling backwards over the couch and into the fireplace, scalding her hand on glowing embers, and she looked up in time to see Seifer raise his hand. An explosion of fiery magic singed the ends of her hair as she rolled sideways to avoid the spell, and the couch burst into flames and smoke. She inhaled deeply and held her breath, then hopped over the burning furniture - his fingertips scalding her ankle and he tried to grab her - and threw herself through the kitchen window.

Glass shards punctured her arms and legs, but she didn't have time to Cure herself or even throw up a Protect as he was already on top of her, devastatingly quick, and used his full weight to pin her to the ground.

His hands wrapped around her throat and began to squeeze. She rammed the stake into his side without hesitation, but he didn't flinch, didn't slacken his grip, even as the blood pooled down his chest and splattered against her shoulders.

She gulped in air and clawed at his hands, squinting up at him with bleary vision. He looked like a demon, white eyed, haloed in billowing smoke, licked by flames. She tried to say his name, but all that came out was a raspy hiss of air.

And then it came to her from the darkness. A power from the source of her being unlike anything the GFs could create. Her Limit Break.

She found the magic, lifted her hands and hit him once, twice, three times with the strongest ice spell in her arsenal. His visage turned frosty, tinged blue and framed with shards of jagged ice, and finally his hands stopped squeezing. Behind him, the ice crept over the house and extinguished the flames, capturing it in a glistening chrysalis.

Her mind hummed with power and blood dripped from her nose. She severed ties with the source of her magic, exhausted, and with her last remnants of energy she kicked him off her.

The ice was dispersing. Magic was only temporary, after all, and already Seifer's colour was returning and his limbs were beginning to twitch.

Gasping and panting, Selphie straddled him, then punched him in the face, again and again. Her knuckles split open, tenderised by the fire and ice, and turned his face into a canvas of red splotches.

"Wake up! Wake! Up! Snap out of it you – you – big _idiot_!" She punctuated each word with a punch. "I. Don't. Want. To. Kill. You!"

His hand shot up and grabbed hers, blocking another punch. It was firm, but it didn't hurt, and when he opened his eyes, they were green again. "Okay," he spluttered. "I get it. I get it."

She moaned with relief, then folded forward onto his chest. She was tired to the bone, more than a little shaken up, and everything hurt. He manoeuvred her to the side then propped himself up on his elbows with a wince. He looked up at the house, then did a double take.

"Holy fuck. Did you – did I…?"

Selphie followed his gaze. One half of the cabin was encased in a giant shard of ice, the other half was burnt black and billowing steam. It was a hot mess. A hot-icy mess.

"You set it on fire, I set it on ice," she explained. She suddenly realised she was kneeling in the snow and couldn't feel her legs anymore. She stood up shakily, almost fell sideways.

"Shit, Tilmitt, you're a mess. Sit down, let me –" He tried to stand, then grunted and suddenly noticed the stake sticking out his side. "Fuck me, did you –"

"Oh – _oh_! Oops I forgot I kinda –"

"You stabbed me!?"

"You were strangling me!"

That shut him up.

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. She had just enough magic, maybe…

"Do you wanna pull it out or shall I?" she asked.

He grunted, then shook his head. "I'll do it, you just be ready."

"Okay."

He pulled out three inches of the stake in one smooth motion, no preamble. It made a sickening crunch on the way out, followed by an eruption of blood, and Selphie immediately clamped her hands over the wound and enveloped the whole area with her most potent of curative spells. His flesh pulsed and churned under her skin as it knitted together, but she didn't let up until the blood stopped pumping between her fingers.

She slowly removed her hands and he inspected his side with a wince. "You gotta knack for that," he said, and that was the closest she was going to get to a 'thank you', she supposed.

She went to stand up - "Yeah, I got top of my –"

* * *

Selphie was looking down at her tiny hands. They were pasted with wet sand and her fingernails were crescents of dirt. Matron was going to scrub her something fierce in the tub later, but she couldn't exactly avoid the dirt while on her belly wedged beneath the foundations of the Orphanage.

_(I realllllly need to speak to Ellone about this)_

She had a good view of the whole yard from her hidey hole and she knew Irvy didn't know about this spot. None of the kids did. She was gonna win Hide-From-Hyne and Irvy would have to give up a week's worth of pudding. It was gonna be awesommmme.

Little feet scampered into view and she clamped her hands over her mouth. It was Irvy, poking around her hiding place. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies. It was only a matter of time before common sense said to check the little ditch under the foundations. Most kids wouldn't dare crawl into such a dark hole, full of bugs as it was, but Irvy knew Selphie wasn't scared of that baby-stuff.

Irvy's boots came closer, obscuring the light. She held her breath, whispering a silent goodbye to all that pudding.

"WaaaaAAAhhhh! Seifer stoooooop!"

The wail came from the beach, unmistakably Zell, and Irvy stopped in his tracks and spun around, then scampered off to investigate. Selphie did an awkward belly wriggle of joy. Pudding wasn't off the menu yet!

She nearly jumped out of her overalls when the light source was obscured again, though the face that peeped into her hideaway wasn't Irvy at all.

"Go away, Seifer! This is my secret place! Find ya own!" Selphie hissed, but he was already wriggling his way into her hidey hole. She harrumphed then shuffled up to let him squeeze in, and it certainly was a squeeze; she was a very small child, and he not so much. They lay on their bellies shoulder to shoulder.

He was red faced and out of breath, so she elbowed him. "Quit breathin' so loud! Yoo'll get us found!"

"Ya owe me," he hissed back. "He woulda found ya, alright."

"Yoo don't know that."

"I do! He definitely woulda found ya. So I threw a rock at Zell. He was hidin' behind the wheelbarrow again so it was easy." He mimicked chucking a rock and Selphie giggled. "But it com… compromise-d my hiding place, and yours is pretty neat, I guess."

"It's top secret," she said, a little crossly. "If yoo tell anyone I'll break yer nose!"

"I ain't a tell-tale."

"Not even to Squall?"

"No 'cause Squall will tell Sis…"

"Pwomise?"

"Yes, already!"

"Yoo gotta say it!"

"… I promise. If we don't get found we'll share the pudding, okay?"

Selphie pouted. "Okay, I guess."

"This'll be like… our secret fort." He seemed pleased with the idea.

"Fort Mayhem!" Selphie chirped, remembering a word Matron had used to describe their antics recently.

"Okay, I agree with that name. Now shush up, already. Irvine'll hear us. That cowboy is here and I'm not gettin' the door. You hear me, Tilmitt? I said -"

* * *

"- I ain't answering the door to that costumed pervert, and I ain't gettin' in the middle of some weird ass domestic."

Selphie batted away the hands that were shaking her and groaned. Her head was pounding, there was the taste of copper in her mouth, and her throat felt like she'd been strang-

Oh. Yeah.

"You got concussion?" There was no concern in the voice. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Blugh –"

The blurry shape of a hand hastily retreated. "Aim the other way if you're gonna puke."

"Mnn not gonna," Selphie said croakily. She sat up very slowly and waited until the room began to right itself. She was on the bottom bunk wrapped in several blankets and Seifer was stooped under the upper bunk, peering grimly at her. He held up three fingers.

"Three," she croaked.

He nodded, then looked sideways. Selphie suddenly realised the pounding in her brain was chorused by a pounding at the door.

"It's your boyfriend," Seifer drawled.

"S'not my boyfriend, but seeing you is gonna make everything worse, so stay in here." She stood up on wobbly legs and gave herself a once over. It looked like Seifer had patched up the worst of her wounds with a potion, but besides that she was still wearing her blood stained, torn Moogle pajamas. "Do I look okay?"

Seifer gave her a disinterested once over. "No."

She observed the ripening bruises on his cheeks, the rough bandaging around his chest, and the ice scalding up his arms. "Do I look worse than you?"

"Your face is okay, I guess."

"Charmer."

"Suck one."

She gave a small smile and jabbed a finger on his chest. "Stay. Here."

Irvine's voice echoed through the cabin. "Sefie, I'm comin' in!"

Selphie hopped into the living area and closed the bedroom door just as Irvine blustered into the cabin. They came to a standstill, stopped short of any greeting by the sight of the burnt couch, the soot stains up the walls, the shattered window and the scorched fireplace. To his credit, Seifer had done a pretty good job of cleaning the debris while she'd been out cold, but nonetheless the place was trashed.

Selphie sheepishly scratched the back of her head and tittered. "We had an incident."

Irvine removed his hat and stared at her. "I don't think this is funny."

"Aww, I'm fine, Irvy. Don't look like that."

"Did he do this?"

"Ah… well. We both did."

Irvine crossed the room and gingerly reached out to touch her. "Holy Hyne, Selphie, your _neck_ –"

"Honestly, it's fine –"

"He strangled you?"

"Well, I did stab him so –"

"Selphie." His expression was taut with worry. "Come. Home."

Selphie dropped his gaze and toed a charred piece of the couch's arm. "But Squall has posted me here on a mission so…"

"I know the mission is fake. You opted to be here." He sighed. "I can understand why you want to vacation to Trabia – hell, I could even understand if you wanted a permanent post in T-Garden. But here in the middle of nowhere? Alone? With _him_? I… I don't understand."

Selphie pulled his hat from his grasp, then put it back on his head. "I know…"

"Just… why?"

"I don't have an answer, Irvy."

"You can stay here. I understand that. But please… look what he's done! He's dangerous. This is dangerous – "

"We've fought way worse –"

"This is different." He dropped his voice. "I don't wanna see him rot, either, Sefie. Nobody does. But for your own safety, leave him in a cell in Esthar, where it's safe. I can't sleep from worryin' about you. None of us can. I keep imaginin' coming here and finding you -" He halted abruptly, looking upset.

Selphie ran her wrist over her eyes. Was she being selfish? Was this a mistake? She thought she was doing everyone a favour by taking him out of Esthar but –

Irvine touched her cheek. "Come home, Sefie."

She held his gaze for a long moment, then stepped backwards. "I am home. For now. Please go back to Garden. I'll be fine."

His expression shattered, then flicked behind her and darkened considerably just as she heard the bedroom door open.

She inwardly groaned. _I really need to try reverse psychology on him sometime._

The men exchanged a long frosty look, then Irvine nodded. "Well, I'm comforted by the fact he looks a lot worse off than you. Good." He took an imposing step towards Seifer. "If anything happens to Selphie, nothing on this planet or the moon will stop me ripping your insides out of your mouth."

"So people keep tellin' me," Seifer said indifferently, before shouldering past them both. "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Selphie rolled her eyes, then offered Irvine a watery smile and touched his arm. "S'okay. Tell everyone I'm fine and that I said hi. Also, can you reassign the Garden Festival duties for me? I've been sorta busy here so I forgot…"

Irvine glanced once more around the ruined cabin. "Busy. Right." He sighed. "I'm at the end of the phone every hour of every day."

"I know."

He hesitated, seeming to want to say more and clearly conflicted, then he straightened his hat and left. She heard the chuntering of a snow mobile, then silence.

After a moment, she picked up her vidphone and speed dialled Rinoa.

"Hey Rinny! Sounds a bit weird but um… could you like, teleport us some new furniture?"

Selphie had been unconscious for four hours, which was typical of magic exhaustion, but despite that they had the worst of the damage cleaned up by lunch time. Ice magic didn't melt into pools of water, thankfully, but Seifer's fire spell meant Selphie spent the better half of the morning sweeping ash out the back door while he dismantled the remains of the couch.

Selphie stopped mid-afternoon to make them both soup, which he accepted without thanks. He ignored the chair she pulled out for him and leaned against the kitchen table instead.

"Rude," she said, then prodded his injury. He bucked under her touch and she giggled. "Sensitive?"

"I got stabbed in the fucking chest with a jagged piece of wood, what do you think?"

Selphie rested her chin on her palm and watched the steam curl around her soup. "What happened anyway? When I woke up you were just standin' outside."

Seifer ran a hand through his hair. "I dunno. I can't remember. The fire had almost died out, so I set it ablaze again with magic… then I just… I just remember blackness."

"Odine said magic use accelerates the hollowing, right? Maybe you shouldn't be on fire duty anymore."

"Well if you had just put an extra log on it overnight then it wouldn't have died out!"

"You're blaming me for this?"

He huffed and looked away. "You know I could kill you, right?"

"You could try," she said. "I gotta admit, you can be pretty scary when you want to be. Anyone else would've been kaput! I think I'm gonna get like, a stun gun or something. Although I'm not even sure that'll do it…"

He looked at her. "You're not gonna send me back to Esthar?"

"Do you wanna go?"

"No."

"Then, no. You were scary, but I'm not scared, 'cause I know all I gotta do is beat the crap outta you!"

Seifer smirked, then downed his soup. "You got lucky."

"Phfft, as if! You know they used to call me Psycho-Selphie in T-Garden."

He looked at her flatly. "Now _that_ I do believe."

"Tee-hee! Anyways, I've ordered some furniture. Rinny is gonna pick it up from the warehouse then teleport it here." She shook her head. "Y'know something that never made sense to me? We get paid so much. Like, sooooo much! I easily earned over one-hundred-thousand Gil during the war, but what are we supposed to do with that money? No families, no homes. It just sits in the bank!"

"Garden seizes your accounts when you die," Seifer told her. "You know the fatality rates. If you're lucky to live past twenty-one they release the account to you, but otherwise the money goes back to Garden. Didn't you know that?"

"No… Although I guess I won't mind so long as it goes into funding the Garden Festivals." Selphie sipped her soup. "Maybe Squall will let me make a will or something."

"Why? You thinkin' of dying soon?"

"You said yourself you might kill me!"

Seifer snorted, then stood up. "I can't be bothered to deal with Rinoa when she gets here and I'm not gettin' involved with decorating. I'm gonna go take a nap and you better not wake me."

_His wound is probably bothering him_, she mused. _Typical man._ "Fiiiine. Just don't be mad if it's decidedly more yellow and pink in here when you wake up. I'm thinking sequins and glitter!"

"Maybe you _should_ write that will after all."

"You got no style!" she shouted after him.

* * *

Rinoa appraised the house and Selphie with undisguised concern. Selphie gave a brisk report, warned her not to wake Seifer, and reassured her that she had the whole situation under control. Selphie believed it too. Seifer was perhaps the strongest person she'd ever met – stronger even than Squall - but he wasn't insurmountable. Like every good SeeD, she knew the risks and accepted them without complaint. Death went hand in hand with most SeeD jobs anyway.

They made a pretty good interior design team. Rinoa dubbed it 'minimalist-cabin-chic' as she threw faux-fur rugs over the floor, wood-carved deer heads on the walls and stained glass lamps over bulbs, while Selphie assembled a bohemian couch and unpacked fresh bed covers and cushions. Rinoa had added several superfluous items to Selphie's order, including plants that hung from the ceiling in rope slings, and several knock-off traditional Trabian ornaments such as wooden carvings of mermerizes and a chocobo feather mobile. There were glass candle holders, a footstall, a magazine rack stocked with Selphie's favourite magazines, and a dog bed for when Angelo came to visit.

Selphie eyed the growing clutter with a grin. "Y'know Seifer is probably gonna set this on fire, right?"

Rinoa spun to face her with a murderous glint in her eye. "I will end him if he does. You tell him that. _End_ him."

Selphie hugged a moogle plush before placing it on the couch. "Shame we can't get satellite reception up here. I don't even think I can hack into T-Garden's intranet this far out!"

"Isn't that why you came here in the first place?" Rinoa pointed out, not expecting an answer. She stood up straight from plumping a cushion and appraised the cabin with a nod. "I should've been an interior designer."

"You could've called the business 'Hyne's Homes," Selphie said agreeably. "How's the fake hunt for Seifer going, anyway?"

Rinoa pulled a face. "Galbadia are going all out, of course. _That man_ has been trying to contact me personally in a bid to get information, I guess. Unfortunately, Garden is still a major suspect and Squall is having to fold under the pressure of granting the army a search warrant for the premises. They won't find anything, but still…"

"Awkwaaaard. They won't just take Squall's word for it?"

"I mean, would you if you were Galbadia? At least a warrant curbs violence. Xu is pretty sure we had a hand in it though…"

"How?"

Rinoa passed her a slightly admonishing smile. "You yelled 'booyaka' before pulling Seifer through the portal on live TV."

"Oppsie."

"Yeah… But I'm sure it'll die down in a few weeks. We're kinda lucky Squall has such a good poker face otherwise we'd be in for all kind of hells." She sighed and looked sideways at the closed bedroom door. "Do you think he even realises the extent of the trouble he causes? Do you think he's even thankful?"

Selphie followed her gaze. "…I don't know. I think he's in a bad place."

Rinoa looked troubled. "Would you do it? I mean, could you? Kill him?"

Selphie unconsciously touched the throbbing necklace of bruises around her throat. "I might not have a choice."

"You're much stronger than me, Sefie," she whispered. "Even after everything he did, I couldn't…"

"Well, you're not a SeeD." Selphie caught herself, then cast Rinoa an apologetic look. "I didn't mean that offensively. The opposite actually. It's messed up that all of us would so easily kill each other, if it came to it. Irvy was gonna shoot Matron, Seifer would've killed us all, we would've killed him, Cid would've let us kill each other, and Squall would kill us all if you asked him to. It's a crazy-insane-family-killing mess." She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "It's kind of a good thing that those sorceress powers went to you. You have a much clearer moral compass than the best of us."

Rinoa caught her in a surprise hug. "You're a good person, Selphie. My superior moral compass tells me so."

"Hee-hee, stop – ack – you're squeezin' the air outta my lungs!"

"Okay. Do you need anything else?"

"Nope!"

She surprised her again by planting a kiss on her cheek. "Be careful."

* * *

Seifer didn't wake up again until it was dark. He emerged looking dishevelled but a much healthier pallor, and the wound on his side didn't seem to be bothering him as much.

Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Selphie wondered how many people had seen Seifer Almasy like this, sporting yesterday's t-shirt, a five o'clock shadow, and unwashed, tousled hair. At the end of the war, he'd looked less devilishly unkempt and more… well, for lack of a better word, _hollow_. Selphie had it to knowledge that Seifer had been a sticker for appearances at Garden, eager to maintain an image of intimidation and perfection. But now?

"What are you starin' at?" he snapped grouchily, then shoved her to one side so he could get to the coffee pot on the stove. "It's late. You could've woken me."

"You specifically told me not to wake you!" Selphie exclaimed. "How's your stab wound?"

"Fine. What's that slop you're cooking?"

She looked up from the pot she was stirring. "It's stew, thank you very much. Trabian style."

"Cold and tasteless?"

"Don't be mean or you won't have any."

Seifer plucked the spoon out of her hand and tasted it. He screwed up his face. "Is seasoning not a thing in Trabia?"

"Give me that," she snapped, snatching back the spoon and going a bit pink. "I think it tastes good."

"It doesn't taste like anything. Stick some seasoning in it and turn the heat down otherwise the meat'll go chewy and the vegetables will turn to mush. You gotta put the lid on the pan as well 'else the broth'll boil away."

Selphie blinked at him. "You can cook?"

"Everyone in Garden gets taught to cook," he said dismissively.

"Noooo. We get taught how to boil rations." She lowered the spoon disbelievingly. "Was cookery your extra-curricular activity?"

"Yes. Now stop askin' stupid questions. You've let the fire burn down again. Why is there a stuffed moogle on the couch? And what is this feathery thing on the wall?"

"Hey, hey! No changin' the subject! I think it's cool that you can cook."

"Thank you for that validation." He crouched by the fire and stuck his hand out. "It means so –"

"_Don't you dare!"_ Selphie boomed over him. She brandished her spoon in his direction, cutting a wholly unimposing figure in her pigtails and ironically blazoned 'Don't Kill The Cook' apron. He blinked at her, hand hovering near the flames.

It took him a moment to realise what she was referring to, then he blew out a tense breath through his nose and begrudgingly threw on a few logs and stirred the embers with a poker, re-igniting the fire the old-fashioned way - a way which didn't risk his sanity and Selphie's neck.

Selphie ladled stew into a couple of bowls and tore off chunks of warmed bread, then sat at the table and placed his portion opposite, but he took it and sat on the couch instead. After a few attempts at painful swallowing, she topped her drink off with a half-cup of Potion, which made the meal a bit more bearable, and if he noticed her Potion-spiking, he chose not to say anything.

She tried to prod him into conversation a few times, but he batted her down and she soon gave up. Instead, she eyed a shabby-chic wooden sign Rinoa had hung on the wall beside the bedroom door. It had the words 'Home Sweet Home' written across it in swirly handwriting, leading Selphie to question Rinoa's decorating choices, or at least her macabre sense of humour.

Momentarily abandoning her stew, she retrieved the sign and a black marker pen, flipped the sign around to its blank back, wrote something, and then hung it up again. Seifer frowned at it.

"If this is some kinda weird in-joke between you losers please don't indulge me. Your stupid might be infectious and I don't –" He stopped, blinking at the sign.

Selphie snapped her fingers at him. "You remember! You totally remember! I knew you would!"

Seifer snorted. "You're kinda lame, you know that?"

She stuck her tongue out at his back, then appraised the interior of the newly christened Fort Mayhem V.2 with a grin.


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

* * *

Seifer wasn't sleeping well.

His dreams were brewed by dark magics and haunted by faces he did not know, or worse, that he did. These phantoms and dismal thoughts stole away any hope of proper rest and were so uncharacteristic of him he presumed they belonged not to his psyche but to the magic instead.

Fleeting respite came courtesy of his dear older 'sister', who occasionally took it upon herself to catapult him into the past against his will and show him memories he hadn't cared about forgetting in the first place. Worse still, she kept sending him back in time with Tilmitt, so he was forced to endure her obnoxious yammering even at night.

Thanks, Ellone.

He sighed restlessly and rolled onto his side.

Trabia was unnervingly quiet, the total opposite of B-Garden, where every silence had been underlined by the hum of fluorescents, low conversation through thin walls, the clack of regulation heels against marble floors, the whir of the aircon. Here there was only the ticking clock on the mantel and, very occasionally, the howl of a distant monster. He could even hear the quiet, even breaths of Tilmitt sleeping.

Immediately an image of her shuttered in front of his eyes: her straddling him, haloed in black smoke, panting, blood running from her nose, a ring of purpling bruises around her neck.

This was exactly why he should be in Esthar, but exactly why he wasn't, and why he'd decided to accept his fate and retribution in the first place. He didn't want a second chance; he could accept the repercussions of his failures, but he would not move forward by the good grace of another man.

And that was the issue he had with his hollowing. His frustration and fears were not borne from the thought of hurting others; they stemmed from not being in control. Present one minute - getting dressed, making coffee, rummaging for breakfast, stoking the fire – then the next: laying on his back in the snow with a five-foot-nothing girl beating him senseless because apparently he had set the house on fire and almost strangled her to death.

He didn't put much faith in the Estharian doctors either. This was second nature to him, of course, as he only trusted himself. To rely on another was to admit weakness, though if people chose to align themselves with whatever he was doing, that suited him fine, so long as they didn't get in his way. A man needs a ladder to climb on to reach the top, after all, so if the doctors and Rinoa wanted to try to cure him, then fine. But he wouldn't depend on them alone, wouldn't allow them to claim that glory as their own.

At the very least, he would die in a way he decided, somewhere that wasn't in the middle of a damn snow globe.

Quietly, he got up, pulled on his thermals, and left the cabin.

It was still dark outside and miserably cold, though the sky was turning frosty lavender above the tree line, heralding dawn, and to the south, snow-bloated clouds obscured the mountaintop. The wind was Shiva's kiss on his lips, numbing them before he could tug the thermal neck protector over his nose.

It felt weird not having his gunblade. All too often he found himself groping at his side, perturbed by the loss of its familiar weight. Hyperion was his oldest and most trusted companion, and he grieved for it in a way that surprised him. But it had been for the best, leaving it behind. He doubted Tilmitt would be alive if he'd had it yesterday morning, though that wasn't much comfort when the dark spaces between the firs shifted with shadows. He would have to run if he was attacked, and that thought only made him angrier.

Once he was far enough from the cabin he stopped and peered imperiously at the tracking device on his wrist. It was tight enough that even if he dislocated his thumb, he wasn't convinced it would slide off so easily, which left him with a temporary solution.

He took a steadying breath and tugged at the latent magic in his mind. Sparks of electricity danced between his fingertips, and he sent a surge of Thunder magic into the tracking device. Electrocuting himself in the process, of course.

Pain jolted all the way down to his toes, almost dropping him to his knees, as his teeth spontaneously clamped together, and the hem of his thermal jacket smoked and vivid light flashed in the corners of his vision. Not bad though. He'd suffered worse. And more importantly, he still had his wits about him.

That said, the spell was a temporary measure and he reckoned there was only so many times he could muddle the circuits with a Thunder spell before the Hollowing took effect. He could manage a few more until he found civilisation and someone who could remove it respectively.

It hadn't snowed at all yesterday, so he easily spotted the tracks of Kinneas' snow mobile and began to follow them at an urgent pace, anticipating snowfall within the hour. Both a blessing and curse, fresh snowfall would obscure both sets of tracks, so the more ground he covered before then, the better.

He followed them along a road through snowfields plagued by monsters and hemmed on both sides by the fir forest. He felt like the mountain was the body of an Old One, or the torso of Hyne maybe, brooding and apathetic to the plight of the creatures scuttling over its corpse.

He was snagged by a curious allure to look back over his shoulder at the cabin. Doubtless it would be a quaint sight with its windows aglow, smoke spiralling from its stone chimney.

Would Tilmitt follow him? If she was really on a SeeD mission, then there was no doubt about it. Yet her true reason for holing herself up in the cabin was a mystery. One he didn't particularly care to solve, but one that might very well hinder his escape if she was as stubborn as she was irritating.

He didn't look back over his shoulder, though he did pick up his pace a little.

* * *

He encountered the first signs of human life at a mining settlement, and the hand-painted picket south of the road told him it was called 'Whelby'. Although it was run down, it looked inhabited; crude wooden settlements functioned as temporary lodgings for the miners, interspersed with a tavern and stores selling imported goods. Not much else to do in such an inhospitable wilderness, Seifer reckoned, besides logging and mining.

Back at B-Garden, he'd learned that Trabia had been hit badly by a Lunar Cry two hundred years ago, which had wiped out whatever civilisation had called the icy plains home and left a sizeable crater in the middle of the continent. Bad for them, not so bad for the future mining industry. The Lunar Cry's didn't just drop hordes of savage man-eating monsters onto the planet, but also precious stones and metals too, the likes of which could forge weaponry (like Hyperion), harbour old magic and even GFs. Regardless, he was surprised that people were still mining the old-fashioned way at all, considering Galbadia had long since industrialised the job. But also, he wasn't really that surprised. Trabia was despairingly backwards in more regards than one.

The town was deserted. Likely the miners had left to work up in mountains at some ungodly hour, before it became too dark and dangerous. Seifer lingered off the side of the main road and considered his options.

The Tilmitt girl was probably awake and looking for him by now. It had started to snow heavily about thirty minutes ago, so depending on when she had awoken, she may or may not have seen his footprints. Regardless, she would know he would head to town because he wasn't stupid or desperate enough to head into the forest and risk both the monsters and freezing temperatures. She also had the advantage of knowing the terrain far better than he. She would track him here eventually; it was only a matter of time.

Stealing a snow mobile or even a chocobo would get him to Trabia City, south of T-Garden, but that would of course be obvious, and Squall would order the city locked down until he was found.

At any rate, he suspected Tilmitt would follow basic SeeD tactics: report to a commanding officer, gather intelligence from local sources, then move accordingly, in this case probably towards the next town. It was unlikely she'd cause a fuss here as B-Garden didn't want word getting out of their involvement with his jail break, so he doubted she would be granted search warrants or throw around her authority. His best bet was to wait right here, the last place they would think to look.

Those Garden stooges thought they knew him so well, he thought scornfully. They'd assume he'd run and keep running, and they'd chase him, but he'd be just out of grasp, always one step ahead, untouchable; they never could keep up with him.

Well. Except Leonhart had caught up, hadn't he?

Seifer cut out that thought with a surgeon's precision. There was no room in his mind for insecurity and uncertainty. These were things weak people felt. Things that could consume a man. So he discarded them and shifted his mind to an objective.

Hunker down. Wait for Tilmitt to pass. Find a discreet way to civilisation. After that? Well. One step at a time.

The outpost consisted of a single snow packed road, lined on either side by wooden buildings. There was a stable shunted up against one home, where a lone chocobo stared at him reproachfully over its bolted door while chewing on a wad of stinking gyshal greens, and nearby, a pack of tethered sled dogs were scrapping over bones. Everywhere else was quiet.

Seifer waded through knee-high snow around the back of the buildings that rucked up against the firs. He avoided the obvious shops and eateries but peered from a safe distance through the frosted windows of those more ambiguous in nature, until he found what he presumed to be miners' lodgings. He was surprised when the window easily slid open, then wondered why he was surprised at all. He highly doubted there were burglars here; this was the kind of place where everybody knew everybody. Even more reason not to be seen.

He boosted himself through the window and barely muffled the landing of his heavy snow boots on wooden boards. Fortunately, the place was empty. Just as he'd suspected, the miners were already at work. Their lodging was crude and sparse, almost military: parallel rows of bunks with lockers and a mishmash of personal belongings hanging on the walls and stuffed under the bed frames.

There was a clock above the front door. It read 8.15am.

He picked a bunk in the far corner close to a window, lay down, and waited.

* * *

Seifer was jolted out of an unexpected, fitful sleep some time later.

Annoyed at himself for falling asleep so carelessly, he got out of bed and padded over to the street-facing window. The cabin betrayed no signs of having been entered and outside was quiet. Lucky.

He briefly mused how not a few years ago he would have awoken thoroughly disorientated, having grown up in B-Garden, but now he was accustomed to waking up in a different location almost every day, each as varied and foreign as the last. It was a rare blessing this hideaway had a bed and running water.

Through the frost-laced window he spied no search parties, no suspect loiterers, no hovercars with spotlights, not even tracks on the road, so he tentatively assumed his plan had unfolded as expected. Though of course, it was never safe to assume.

He left the cabin and made for what looked to be Whelby's only drinking spot, a tavern ironically named the Sunspot. This was a risky move on his part, as a SeeD party would likewise make for the tavern to source information, but he highly suspected Tilmitt would have moved her search on by now, meaning he would be able to trace _her_ whereabouts instead.

The Sunspot was likely the oldest building in town, a rickety beast with icicle laced eaves and a sign over its door. The writing there was in the dead language of the Bika, a civilisation that predated Trabian settlers by three centuries. Seifer translated: **RESPITE FROM THE COLD**, **FOR THOSE WEARY OF SOUL.**

A wall of heat washed over him when he entered, followed by the strong scent of something sweet cooking, stale beer and tobacco. It was a small dive, made smaller by the heads of trophy kills mounted on the walls; they stared down at him with their glassy, accusatory eyes and wicked curved horns that scraped the beamed ceiling. The floor was largely obscured by mismatched chairs and tables, and the bar was a tapestry of brass taps and tin tumblers on hooks. Seifer felt like he'd stepped back in time one hundred years, but that was Trabia for you. A depressing time warp.

Three whiskered old men smoked pipes near the fireplace and did not drop their distrustful stares even when he fixed them with his most threatening glower. At least they were observant, he thought, though they would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to miss Tilmitt.

He sat on a stool at the bar and waited.

After a long moment a middle-aged man emerged through a set of doors that appeared to lead to a kitchen, shouting at someone over his shoulder. He had a shock of grey hair, wiry arms, a scar on his left cheek and a grim set to his mouth. Seifer reckoned him to be a retired miner.

The man appraised him suspiciously, then addressed him a thick, northern brogue. "Need somethin'?"

"A drink to start, and food if you've got any. I don't care what." (And he genuinely didn't; he realised he was actually very hungry and hadn't eaten since yesterday). "Also, I'm lookin' for work. In the mines."

The man made a sweeping gesture towards the door. "You'll have to speak to Graves at the lodge yonder. He does the recruitment." He eyed Seifer speculatively again. "Murderer?"

It was only years of training that kept Seifer's expression carefully blank. "What?"

""S'wat you lads come here for, eh? Nobody wants to mine. The money is shit. Working conditions shitter." He hawked and spat into a tin behind the bar. "So you young 'uns only come 'ere if you're runnin' from somethin' or someone. Not that I'm judging, or prying, in particular. But I will say that if you cause trouble, there's no policing force for miles around. We're the judge, the jury and the executioner." He levelled Seifer with a gaze that might have been intimidating if it had been aimed at anyone else. "Terrible accidents can happen this far up the mountain. People go missing all the time. Especially those with an affinity for trouble-making."

Seifer bit down his annoyance. This hick had no idea who he was messing with.

"I'm not a murderer or a creep. But I'm glad to hear people don't ask questions, and presumably those who ask questions don't get the answers they're lookin' for."

The man smirked, then poured Seifer a pint of something dark and bitter. "We got mesmerize and potato stew and whatever else the chef is cookin' up, but I'll have to get back to you on that. It'll be ten Gil."

Seifer slid him a few coins (stolen from Tilmitt) and sipped the ale – a bitter concoction that had an aftertaste somewhere between gunblade oil and cat piss – and surreptitiously positioned himself at the opposite end of the bar, back to the wall, eye on the door. Not a lot he could do if he was ambushed here, but he could at least try to have the upper hand. He'd bet his last Gil that the old man had a gun behind the bar, which he could steal in a pinch. So long as Rinoa didn't walk through the door, he was confident he could eliminate any threat. Even Squall.

The barman returned with his stew as he mulled over his options. Tilmitt had obviously moved on, so his best bet was to hunker down while SeeD chased after false leads that would inevitably take them further away from Trabia. If what the man said was right, this was a sort of no-man's land for outcasts and criminals to disappear. Well, that suited him perfectly. They likely had as much love for the authorities as he did.

Thirty minutes later, it appeared the miners had finished their shift, because their first port of call was the Sunspot. They swarmed through the doors – dozens and dozens of them, stinking, grimy, raucous and surly – while chanting the barman's name like a prayer (Sorely, apparently). Of course, Seifer was the subject of attention, yet when no one bothered him his mask of indifference became genuine, and he watched as the tavern became a den for every bad habit a man could think up. Each table was a setting for some sinful vice: gambling and whoring, drinking and smoking, fist fights and profanity. It was a far cry from the military discipline of SeeD, but it made for good entertainment. Reminded him of simpler times when he, Fu and Rai would sneak away to the local Balamb dives to drink and play cards.

"He'll want to know what ya did," the man named Sorely said. He approached Seifer's end of the bar where it was quieter, scrubbing pint glasses with a rag while chewing on a cigar. "Graves, I mean. He'll ask, but won't pass it on. The mines are confined, see. He can't risk anyone goin' batshit in them caves. Bad for business and morale, eh? On top of that, Graves wouldn't trust his own mother. But I can put in a good word for you, if you're honest."

Seifer looked askance, making a show of weighing up his options. Then, with feigned reluctance, he said, "I am… was… a mercenary. In the war."

"SeeD?"

"No. Independent."

"And?"

"Fought on the wrong side. Company is bein' sued for war crimes."

"And the crew is sinkin' with the ship, eh?" Sorely shrugged. "Welp, that's life. I'll pass on the message. In fact, Graves will likely be glad to have your type around."

"Yeah?"

"We've been havin' problems with dragons, believe it or not. Up in the woods. Ever since the war the moon has been sheddin' them like crabs off a dead whore. Blasted things have savaged three miners this month. Hard enough to make a living out here without a two-ton lizard tryin' to chew off your cock." He looked Seifer up and down. "You reckon you could take on a dragon?"

Seifer sipped his beer. He'd killed exactly thirteen dragons in the last six years, and five of those had been without a GF. "If the price is right."

Sorely grinned. "You ain't a merc anymore, boy. You do the work and you get to stay. At best, you get paid in leeks and potatoes." He frowned suddenly. "Where are you pitched at anyways?"

"I'm… I've got accommodation."

Sorely peered at him, unimpressed and belligerent. "Accommodation. Right. You think I live under a rock, boy? I know these woods like the back of my hand." His frown came again, a fork of lightning across his clouded brow. "Hey, you ain't with that girl from the T-Garden outpost, are you?"

Seifer stiffened. Finally, he was getting answers without even having to ask. "What girl?"

Sorely grinned, but he didn't answer. He didn't need to.

"PANCAAAAKES!"

As if conjured by a spell, a stack of pancakes appeared on the bar in front of him. He stared at them in bewilderment for a few seconds, then spun on his stool to confront their summoner.

Tilmitt stood in front of him, face flushed and smeared with flour, wearing an apron and a ludicrously tall chef's hat. She was grinning like the cat that got the cream.

"I made PANCAKES!" she announced. "You want maple syrup? Tsk, what am I saying, of _course_ you want maple syrup, _everybody_ loves maple syrup, only _FREAKS_ don't like maple syrup." She leaned well within the boundaries of his personal space and squirted an ungodly amount of syrup onto the pancakes behind him.

For the first time since he could remember, Seifer was utterly lost for words. His mind seesawed between being angry for underestimating her – one of the highest ranking SeeDs in Garden – just because she played the role of the ditz, and being angry because she was a total nutjob that literally needed to be committed to an asylum, so he should have known better than to think she'd go on her merry way like a good, predictable SeeD.

Either way, he was angry, and he pushed her out of his personal space and held her at arm's length.

She must have seen the look on his face, because she worriedly backtracked out his grasp.

"Oh. Do you… not like maple syrup?"

He bit down a stutter and wrestled his anger back under control. He could still turn this to his advantage. He just needed to think. Needed more information. "Maple syrup is fine."

Selphie breathed a dramatic sigh of relief. "Pheeew! Wow, I thought you were gonna be one of _thoooose_ people and I was like, totally gonna have to kill you in your sleep."

He couldn't tell if she was joking.

"Anyways," she continued brightly, "I've made pancakes for everyooone! You want some, Sorely?" She didn't wait for him to reply as she stood on the bar and hollered in a voice ten times louder than even the most raucous of miners: "WHO WAAANTS PANCAAAAKES!?"

This was met by an ungodly roar of approval and raised flagons and no less than three brawls. Selphie hooted, then ducked and weaved between flailing limbs and thrown flagons before disappearing into the kitchen.

Seifer watched her go, still floundering in a twilight of perplexity, then shoved that aside to make way for the familiar rage. And nothing made him angrier than a lack of control.

He pushed his way behind the bar and all but kicked down the kitchen door. Tilmitt was muttering like a witch over a cauldron while spooning syrup over a stack of what looked to be near one hundred pancakes. He grabbed her brusquely by the shoulder and spun her around, sending the stack sliding sideways across the kitchen countertop.

"Heeey!" she said. "You don't have to be so rough, ya know?"

"What," Seifer seethed through gritted teeth, "are you doing? And if you say 'making pancakes' I will ram that bottle so far down your throat you'll be pissing syrup for a week."

Tilmitt went wide eyed and clasped the syrup bottle protectively behind her back. "Weeelll, you weren't there when I woke up so I considered calling Squall and tellin' him, but then I thought I'd go look for you in town, but then I got distracted talking to Sorely, and then I got hungry, and then I made pancakes –"

He lifted his hand to grab her by the throat, then scrabbled back his control and slowly lowered it. "Fucking _stop_ with the dumb act. You might be fine with making an idiot out of yourself but you're not making an idiot out of me. You came looking for me, but you broke SeeD protocol by not reporting my disappearance. Why?"

There was a slight shift in her expression, a nuance so subtle it would have missed by anyone else. But Seifer caught it, and with it, he snatched a glance of the person underneath the idiotic façade she kept up.

"Um, I mean, I'm not really on a mission. I'm on paid vacation leave and I wanted to go to Trabia and I asked you to be here with me and you said yes. If you'd gone missing, I would have had to tell someone eventually, and they probably would have sent a legit squad out to search for you, but it's not my job to watch you. I dunno, it's confusing."

He frowned at her. She seemed to be telling the truth. "So why did you come look for me at all?"

She shrugged. "Was worried about you, I guess. Thought maybe you'd… you know."

He stared at her for a long minute, dancing between annoyance, disgust and another weird feeling that made him feel… pleased. Like he was still important to someone, at least. Albeit a worthless someone.

She turned back to her pancake stack and said offhandedly, "For what it's worth, it would be nice if you stayed a bit longer. I mean, you can totally leave, and I won't stop you, but I might go with you just to make sure, you know, nothing bad happens to Trabia. But after that you can just go, I guess. I'd have to tell someone, but I wouldn't hunt you down. Uh, unless Squall told me to. But I am on vacation so –"

"Alright, shut up, Hyne." He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. He'd assumed he was under house arrest, and to an extent he was, but Tilmitt was happy to just let him leave so technically he still had control over himself, and over her. "I'll stay. For now."

She spun around, balancing two over-stacked plates of pancakes in either hand. "Really!? Yeeeaahhh! I didn't think you would! WOO-HOOO!"

Seifer rolled his eyes and returned to the bar to finish his drink.

"Heeey, what about the pancakes?" she called after him.

* * *

It felt strange walking back to the cabin with Selphie. He felt defeated somehow, his plans gone awry, his daring escape banked beneath a simpler scheme of someone else's making. He wondered if this would be his life now that he had no golden dream to steer his actions.

He told himself it was his decision to return and he was under no persuasion, but the truth was the girl was one of few people he'd met who didn't want to fight him, figuratively speaking, and it had a curious effect over him. Every brash and ambitious move he'd made in Garden had been countered with hostility, disapproval and doubt. Not that he cared for the opinion of others, but it was refreshing to be met with something between indifference and support. Not quite Squall's cold dismissals or Rinoa's heartfelt encouragement or Cid's textbook support – just acceptance. Selphie was a dangerous melding pot of wacky ideas and optimism, so by comparison even his most ambitious of plans might seem tame compared to whatever the hells went on in her brain.

And for once, because he wasn't met with any familiar scorn or dismissal or challenge, he felt no need to prove his worth or dominate the situation. He simply followed Selphie back to the cabin.

It was growing dark and the cold was Death's breath against his skin. The monsters hooted in the woods, and Selphie cocked her head at the noises, seeming to recall something.

"I'm gonna help the miners out," she declared. "They've got a dragon problem, did ya hear? Snow Lions are bad enough, but they're kittens compared to the Blues."

"They're not gonna pay you," Seifer said gruffly. "Anyway, won't that attract attention? I thought this was meant to be a covert mission."

"S'not a mission," Selphie reminded him. "It's my vacation time and I'll do what I like with that time. When Galbadia industrialised the mining industry, Trabia's economy took a beating, so I wanna help out where I can otherwise all these peeps will lose their jobs, right? That would suck. Plus the cabin is kinda boring soooo…."

"We can agree on that, at least."

She glanced at him from underneath her fur trimmed hood. "Wanna come with?"

He huffed in agitation, fingers brushing where Hyperion's hilt should have been. The old itch to fight niggled him, restless in his veins. "I probably shouldn't."

"You can be my back up!" Selphie proclaimed with a defiant fist pump. "We would totally make a good team!"

"I'm not anyone's _back up_," Seifer spat. "And I don't work in teams."

"Awww c'mon. I can't go alone! What if I get eaten?"

"That'll be your own stupid fault. Besides, I'm more likely to attack you before I attack the dragon if I turn."

"You can be my support, okay? I'm gonna need some antidotes, esunas, curagas, potions… the works."

"Ugh, demoted to white mage duties. How pathetic."

"So you'd rather be stuck in the cabin by yourself?"

She had a point. Besides, watching her get mauled by a dragon wouldn't be the worst entertainment in the world. "Fine. But only because I know this might give both Kinneas and Leonhart minor aneurisms when they find out."

"WOO-HOO! Partners in crime! I knew I could count on you!" She punched his shoulder and he threw her a thoroughly annoyed look.

"I'm not your partner, and I'm not your friend, so drop the act."

"I'm friends with everyone," she told him seriously. "Besides, we were friends once. Why can't we be again?"

He paused, eyes picking between the trunks of the firs. "That was a long time ago."

She leaned forward while she walked to peer at his face through curious eyes. The gesture reminded him of Rinoa, except Selphie didn't share her naivety. He didn't doubt that every cheery nuance and expression was the result of years of crafting to conceal the same mercenary training he'd endured, and all the damage that inevitably came with it. She was so good at it that even Seifer had to remind himself that she wasn't a total blundering idiot.

She picked that moment to slip on some ice and fall gracelessly on her ass. Entirely unperturbed, she stuck her tongue out and bleated, "Tee hee! I forget how slippery ice is sometimes!"

Seifer rolled his eyes and offered his hand, which she took with a playful wink.

It was a long, cold walk back to the cabin, especially when Selphie started singing pop songs. When the cabin finally came into view, he felt unsettled and uncharacteristically morose. The cabin looked quaint, unbefitting of someone like him, with its shuttered windows leaking ribbons of amber light, and the thin smoke twisting from the chimney. Would this truly be his tomb?

Inside, he kicked off his boots and thermals and embraced the heat of the cabin, while Tilmitt threw a few more logs onto the fire then went to take a shower. Unable to shake his morose, Seifer poured himself a thumb of whiskey, scoffed, then took the whole bottle back with him to the sofa. He kicked his feet up on a footstool and stared at the flames.

He'd never been a drinker – of course not. He was a fighter and had no time or interest in inhibiting his physical prowess. Besides, as fun as alcohol was, it took away the control and made his usually tunnelled, razor-sharp thoughts blur into uncertainty.

In short, he was a depressed drinker. Where usually he was the first to action, burning with ideas and confidence, he became dull and insular when distracted by alcohol, and spent his time at parties brooding in a corner – like Leonhart. And that was _no_ way to be.

But now the booze worked to take the edge off his wired thoughts, so he just let himself drink.

This state of pseudo-peace was interrupted by Tilmitt, who unceremoniously plonked herself onto the couch beside him and stole the whiskey from his fingers with an impish grin. Her fluffy pink robe parted when she sat down, revealing a slither of thigh, and her wet hair clung to her pale throat as the fire dulled her eyes to a musky jade.

She caught his stare and matched it around the rim of her tumbler. "What?"

He blinked once, indeed wondering what he'd been staring at, then averted his gaze to the fire. "You don't need to keep up that fake happy act around me. Nobody else here to see it. Nobody that cares, anyway."

"It's not fake," she said. "I am happy."

"Or have you been this way for so long you don't even know who you are anymore?"

She prodded him with her bare foot. "I could say the same about your asshole act."

"No, I genuinely am an asshole."

She giggled, then sobered. "I'm happy 'cause it makes other people happy! I help 'em forget about their own suffering for a bit. Happiness is infectious, eh? It's hard to be unhappy around someone who's happy all the time!"

"Well, it's annoying. So stop."

Selphie cocked her head. "Mmm… Maybe."

"It's a lame coping mechanism that doesn't work," Seifer told her, confrontationally. "You're just runnin' away from how you really feel."

"Wow, that's rich comin' from you," she retorted, then sighed. "We're all messed up anyways. You, me, Squall, Irvy… Eh, who cares?" She raised her drink to him. "Here's to being fuck ups!"

He looked at her, then raised his glass and clinked it against hers. They drank together in silence.


	8. Chapter 8

Centran summers were just as sharp and stinging as Trabian winters, but instead of blizzards there was blistering heat, and instead of snow there was cracked earth. But Selphie hadn't seen snow. Not yet. She only knew these summers and sun and was thoroughly unsettled when Matron, hiding tears behind her long hair, had packed thick coats and fur lined boots into a little suitcase.

She didn't understand about Garden either. All she understood was that she was leaving, and that she was the first to leave, and that she wasn't going to see her friends again for a long time. Maybe ever.

She was grim faced as she watched Matron pack her things away, and sullen as she listened to Cid giving instructions to the White SeeDs, then downright mutinous when Matron told her to say goodbye to her friends.

Matron dropped to her knees and wrapped Selphie in a hug, smelling like lavender and summer and home, then she held Selphie at arm's length and smiled. "Sefie, my sweetling, don't be so glum. You'll love Trabia. I made sure you would. Cid and I took great care when picking everyone's new homes. Remember what I told you about fairy gifts and wild chocobo? Don't you want to go sledding?"

"No," Selphie said petulantly, though she did.

"Everyone is going to school," Matron reasoned. "Irvine, Quisitis, Zell. They might be different schools, but that's okay, because I'm sure you'll all find your place in the world."

"But my place is here, with yoo, and Irvy, and Seifer, and even cry-baby Zell."

Matron smiled sadly. "Things can't stay the same forever, my sweetling."

"Why not?"

"Because if they did, we wouldn't have spring time, or birthdays, or kittens. New things might be scary at first, but lots of amazing things can happen too. You'll make more friends and see wonderful places, I'm sure of it."

"But I like my old friends! And my old bed. And my old toys."

"And you'll always have them here – " She touched a finger to Selphie's chest – "in your heart. I promise." Cid yelled for Matron and she glanced over her shoulder briefly before touching Selphie's cheek and saying, "Run around for a while. I'll call you soon."

Selphie didn't run, and she was too scared to find her friends. Cid had broken them news to them earlier that morning, and although they had been forewarned about each other's departure, they hadn't taken to it well. Selphie didn't want to see Irvy cry again, so she went out to the backyard to say goodbye to her seashell collection instead.

That's where she found Seifer sitting on a stone wall, skin turning pink in the sun, with his head propped on his hands.

"'S'dumb," he mumbled when she approached him.

"Huh?"

"S'dumb how we gotta get split up. I don't get it."

"Me neither. I wish I could stay here forever. All of us, together. Matron says change is good, but I dunno if it is…"

"What's so great about Garden, anyways?"

"Dunno."She kicked an imaginary rock and forced a smile onto her face. "Snow sounds okay, I guess. I bet they'll be chocobo…"

Seifer huffed, then glared at her. "You're not even sad!"

"I am too!"

"Then why're ya smiling?"

"'Cause I… I don't want anyone to…"

"Just stop. It's dumb. You're dumb! I'm glad you're leaving."

Selphie's smile quivered. Traitorous tears stung the corners of her eyes, and she bit hard on her lip to stop them from falling. "I'm glad I'm leaving too! Yoo suck!" She kicked his shin.

Seifer shot up belligerently and went to push her but was stopped short by the fat tears rolling down her cheeks. He crumpled a little under her gaze. "Well, Cid says I'm going to a Garden too one day, so I guess we'll see each other again."

Selphie blinked tearfully at him. "Really? You think so?"

"Sure," he said, then his expression darkened. "You better not tell Matron I made you cry, 'cause it wasn't me. You kicked me first."

"M'not cryin'," she said, wiping away her tears. "Just got dust in my eyes. Hey, d'ya think we'll all be together again, one day?"

"Dunno. Maybe. Squall and me'll stay together though, for sure."

"But Sis went away…"

"Yeah, that's why I gotta stay with 'im. He's such a baby and cries all the time now. Almost as much as Zell. I guess someone has gotta look after him."

Selphie stared at the ground. "I just don't understand why I have t' go by myself. Why can't we go to the same Garden? Cid said I'll understand when I'm older but I'm older now and don't understand at all!"

"The world ain't that big," Seifer declared. "Even though we won't be in the same house, we'll find each other easily, I'll bet."

"But the ocean is really big…"

"Then we'll build a boat."

"Or I'll fly on a spaceship!"

"There's no spaceships, dummy."

"There is too!"

"Only in space."

"Nuh-uh, they're in the sky too."

A yell echoed from within the Orphanage; Matron was calling for Selphie.

Seifer and Selphie exchanged a frightened look, then Selphie grinned and planted a sloppy kiss on his lips. She pulled away in time to catch his thoroughly ruffled expression before it vanished in place of disgust, and he spat on the ground.

"Urrrrk! What the hell is wrong with you, ya sicko?"

"Language," Matron chastised, ever omnipresent. She loomed over the pair with a small smile on her lips, and Selphie flushed despite herself, caught in the act, before taking Matron's outstretched hand.

"We going now?"

"Yes, Selphie. Come and say goodbye to your friends."

"Matron? Will… will I get to see my friends again?"

Matron smiled kindly down at the two. "If you work hard and hold on to your memories, I'm sure you will."

Selphie smiled. "Okay!" She looked at Seifer. "See ya later!"

She thought he looked a bit red faced, but that might have just been the sun. "See ya later, Sel."

* * *

Waking from one of Ellone's flashbacks was always a strange occurrence that leaned more towards an outer body experience than a dream. Sometimes they left sensory traces – the smell of lavender, the sun's heat on the back of her neck – and the images remained startlingly vivid, so although Selphie's senses were groggy, she could recall what had transpired in detail.

She roused herself from sleep and was immediately made aware of warmth. A lot of warmth. She jerked awake proper, propelled by visions of hollow-Seifer burning the cabin to the ground.

Disorientated, she fought against an anchor of blankets. The morning was not yet bright enough to illuminate her surroundings, but she could tell there were no fires raging out of control. Quiet lulled her panicked thoughts, and as the heady veil of sleep lifted, she became aware of the source of the heat.

Seifer. She was on top of Seifer. Literally straddling him under blankets on the sofa with only a fluffy bathrobe to protect her modesty. Panic of fire turned swiftly into panic of another kind as she clamped the robe over her chest.

_Hyne's burnt biscuits, did we…?_

She wracked her brain. Memories of the previous night were blurred, and the stale stink of rum sharpened her dread, yet she was sure they hadn't done anything. Just talked, drank, sat in silence, played a game of cards that ended when he fell asleep on the sofa. Then her alcohol-muddied brain had told her she was cold, and then convinced her to roll herself in blankets, then roll on top of him, for good measure.

_This! This is why you don't drink, you big dummy!_

With all the graceless discretion she could muster, she slid off him and padded to the kitchenette to make breakfast.

She immediately regretted it. He had been warm – unnaturally warm, actually – but the humiliation of being discovered outweighed the prospect of warm toes and fingers. He would be good to snuggle though, she mused, and the thought of Seifer 'snuggling' teased a chuckle out of her.

She downed two glasses of water and ate a slice of dry toast to bank the roiling of her stomach, then threw more logs on the fire, brushed her teeth and got dressed. She perched on the edge of the sofa at his feet, and while she braided her hair it occurred to her that the roiling in her belly wasn't completely on account of the rum. Matron's words played across her mind.

'_If you work hard and hold on to your memories, I'm sure you'll be together again.'_

Had she known about the memory loss her children would suffer? Did she care?

Selphie recalled a time, some years back before the war and her transfer to B-Garden, when she had been sorting through a scrap books of photos. One photo in particular had caught her eye, and she had pulled it out of its slot to study it closer. The Winter Festival in Trabia Town, her and three of her friends pulling faces in front of a carousel. It was unmistakably her in the photo, yet she had no memory that day. None. Weird, but she'd shrugged it off.

A week later, she'd woken up and remembered nothing of the previous day. She remembered the day before that, but then… nothing. A slate scrubbed clean. The doctor said she must have been suffering a concussion but, Hyne, they had known. They'd all known.

She felt foolish now, not being able to connect the dots. But then again, even if she had figured it out, would she have stopped using GFs? The price for power was often a steep one, particularly when it came in the form of otherworldly beasts that could raze cities to ash, if the fancy came upon them.

She looked at Seifer then, asleep on the couch. He was paying the ultimate price for the power and the recognition he'd craved. He'd wanted to prove his worth to someone, anyone who gave an orphan time. Someone other than Cid, other than SeeD. But it had backfired. Terribly.

Her mind turned uneasily to his hollowing.

A short lifespan was expected and openly accepted within SeeD. Losing friends was an unfortunate part of the job. Garden numbed them to it, or tried to, anyway. Selphie was certainly desensitized, moreso than most. But the thought of watching Seifer waste away…

Sometimes she wanted to kill Cid. No exaggeration. He'd played them all as pawns while asserting himself as a father figure; manipulated parentless, emotionally damaged children to use as weapons. He'd placed them strategically around the globe: Irvine in Galbadia, Zell in Balamb, Quistis in Dollet, Selphie in Trabia, and of course Squall and Seifer at his side. His intentions were so glaringly obvious now it made Selphie want to cry. He made them love each other, tore them apart, moulded them into fighters for his regime, then used that love to strengthen their offence. It all seemed so contrived now.

_But the friendship is real_, she reminded herself resolutely. _My love for them is real._

Seifer's role in Cid's scheme seemed more complex. Everyone assumed he'd kept Seifer because he'd always been Cid's favourite, and had been mostly unhandlable by anyone other than Cid, even as a child. But then Matron had filled his head with the romance of knighthood and insisted he go to Garden with Squall, and it all smelled fishy to Selphie, and if it didn't sit right with her, she couldn't imagine how Seifer must have felt.

On impulse, she leaned across the sofa and smoothed his hair away from his face. Of all of them, he had been the most manipulated. Used and tossed aside, no regard for the repercussions. Unfair. Life was unfair.

He stirred, and she shot up from the couch. "M-morning! G'morning!"

He glared at her, then shut his eyes against the light. "Mnn."

"Grumpy? Or just hungover? Or grumpy from being hungover?"

"It should be illegal for someone like you to talk before 7am," he croaked.

Selphie smacked her fist against her palm. "I like to start the day with positivity and sunshine! And pancakes! You want pancakes?"

"No," he groaned. "I want you and Ellone to take an extended vacation to the Island Closest to Hell."

Selphie straightened in surprise. "Ellone's been takin' you back too!? Since when!?"

"Since Esthar. Since you got her involved in all this shit."

"Oh –ah… heh, so I guess we probably keep gettin' sent back together, eh?"

He sat up slowly and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Seems likely. I don't know why she's doing this though. She needs to learn some fuckin' self-control."

She sheepishly prodded the rug with her toe. "So I guess you… ya know… dreamed the same thing as me, or whatever. Last night, I mean. Eeeeh, that's kinda awkward. Or something."

He looked at her blankly. "What is?"

"Ya knoooow."

He frowned, then blinked comprehendingly. "Tilmitt, we were _six_. What's there to be fucking awkward about? Don't be so prude."

"I'm not bein' prude," she bleated defensively. "I just… forgot so it's… Hey. Heeeey! You knew before, didn't you? Because Ultimecia restored your memory!"

Seifer stood up and poured himself a glass of water. "Well, I remember before her, actually. Dunno why."

"Whhaaaa? You remembered!? Tee hee, that's so cute! I guess I'm flattered."

"Well, don't be," he sneered. "I didn't remember it was _you_. I just remembered some short-ass weirdo girl throwing herself at me before disappearing forever."

"Not forever," she amended. "Anyways, I hope you're not too hungover 'cause we should go help out the miners today, eh? I wanna get those dragons before they hurt anyone else!"

"Anything's better than bein' stuck in this cabin with you. Even dragons."

"Ah. You don't mean that, otherwise you'd be in Esthar right now."

"You're right. You're somewhere on the scale between human experimentation with Doctor Odine and dragons."

"I'll take that," she said, playfully elbowing him. "I guess that puts you on the scale between staying at Garden and entering Hyne's Holy Order of celibate nuns."

Seifer pinned her with a narrow look. "Garden that bad?"

She swallowed and inched her smile wider. "Imma get changed into my thermals."

"That's a pitiful diversion tactic."

"I'll upgrade to 'whatever' then."

"Please don't."

She skipped into the bedroom and shut the door, then pulled on her navy-blue thermals and bright yellow jacket. She had to wait half an hour while Seifer had a shower and generally composed himself as a human being with coffee and protein bars before they were ready to leave for town.

Outside, the forest was crystalline, bleached of colour. Banners of icicles hung from branches that steamed in the early morning sun, and freshly fallen snow was punctured by animal tracks. In the distance, Selphie thought she heard the call of a chocobo, but it was lost in a bitter blast of wind. She adjusted her nunchaku on her back and they began their trek in earnest.

Seifer was obviously still feeling the dregs of his hangover, so Selphie was left alone to amuse herself. She collected fallen pine branches and swept imaginary dust from her path, found three owl feathers that she stuck in her hair, and a pretty rock that was probably once part of a Wizard Stone, though it was dry of any magic, so she threw it at a red squirrel and missed (on purpose).

As she hummed and skipped and skidded across iced-up puddles, it suddenly occurred to her that for the first time in a long while she felt genuinely carefree. Her troubles were there, but dulled by the bright snow and pine-fresh air. She felt like she could think clearly again.

She skipped ahead of Seifer, then turned to face him, arms akimbo.

"Pop quiz! What do you think you'd be doing now if Cid hadn't made us all go to Garden?"

Seifer trudged past her and she trotted to keep pace. "That's too broad of a question to answer."

"There are a lot of options," she agreed. "Like, so many jobs, you know? I could have been an astronaut or… an architect… or a chicken farmer… or a rollercoaster tester!"

"I didn't mean that. What you grow up to be is circumstantial. If I went to Timber I might have been a revolutionary, or just as a likely a carpenter. If I'd gone to Galbadia I might have been a solider, or a journalist, or a lawyer, depending on my social standing. You can only become what you want given upbringing and opportunity."

She thought about this for a moment. "Both you and Rinoa prove there are exceptions to that rule. Rinoa was probably just meant to be some, like, jobless heiress trophy wife, and you were meant to be a SeeD, but –"

"I was never meant to be a SeeD," Seifer said sharply. "Besides, look where it got us both."

"It still shows that you can break the system."

"Given circumstance and opportunity," Seifer reiterated. "Maybe Rinoa's case is a bit different, but mine isn't. This is what Cid intended all along."

She blinked at him, taken aback by his tone. "You think you were set up to fail?"

"I think I was too predictable."

Selphie sidled closer to him and trailed her boots in the snow, hands in her pockets. Quietly, she said, "I don't think they wanted to hurt us. Cid and Matron, I mean. I know they wanted to adopt us out to normal families, originally. They tried, with Zell, and they set the orphanage up before future-Squall came along, ya know? They… they wanted to do what was best for everyone and we were… the collateral damage." She hesitated, chewing on words she'd never said aloud to anyone. "They gave us the tools to survive the ordeal, and we did, but now it's all over and… they've abandoned us again. I love Edea and Cid because I don't have anyone else to love like that, but I also hate that I love them, because I don't think love should feel like this…"

He skewed her with a curious look, eyes bright jade above his black thermal mask, then he looked away. "I can't imagine being anything but a fighter. Everything else sounds boring. Although, at least I don't have to worry about what I'm gonna do anymore. Even that got decided for me."

She punched him on the arm. "Don't say that! It's annoying. You got the best mind workin' on your case!"

"You?"

"Uh, well I was gonna say Odine, but I'm flattered."

He snorted and avoided her gaze. "There's the town. We should stock up first."

Selphie followed his gaze to Whelby and nodded. "It's been a while since I fought a Blue one on one, but I think I'll be fine. So long as my white mage is here."

"I am _not_ your white mage."

They went first to the Sunspot to gather more information from Sorely. The portly barkeeper appraised the pair with no small amount of disbelief, eyebrows touching his hairline above a smoking cigar.

"Yer serious, eh? You know there's no hospitals around here? If ya get beat up you're pretty much on ya own."

"We can totally handle ourselves," Selphie chirped, flexing her bicep.

"You a runaway merc too?" Sorely asked dryly.

Selphie didn't miss a beat or so much as glance at Seifer. "Yep!"

"Bit small for a merc, aren't ya?"

"I'm the brains." Selphie cocked a thumb over her shoulder at Seifer. "He's the brawn."

Sorely looked between the two of them, cigar tilting out of his mouth at an absurd angle. "Rrrrright. Welp, none of my business anyhow, s'long as you don't start trouble. Getting rid of the dragons will be the deal breaker. Funny how forgetful I can be when people start asking questions around here."

"Right!" Selphie said agreeably. "Anywho, where should we start lookin'?"

Sorely shrugged. "They're nomadic, seems like. In the forest, in the mines, the caves. They come around to drag off livestock every few days, or an unlucky miner. Ah, but Greta says her delivery is late this week. Shoulda come a few days ago, but they haven't turned up. No storm to testify it, neither. Could be dragons."

"Sounds like a clue to me!" Selphie said. "Let's go investigate!"

Sorely plucked the cigar from between his lips and levelled it at her. "Now listen here, Miss Brains. These are _dragons_ we're talkin' about. People have died – torn apart, dragged screamin' into the forest, bones stripped clean. This ain't a fuckin' game –"

"Save it," Seifer said. "She – we don't need a lecture." He turned to leave. "Be seein' ya."

Sorely snorted. "Hope so, kid."

Selphie skipped back out to the streets and spun on her heels to face Seifer. "Let's go see Greta and track us down some dragons, Mr Brawn!"

"Would you fuckin' stop, already?"

"Hee hee! C'mon, you gotta remember those old lectures, hey? Reinforcing an impression of weakness has saved my life more times than I can count. Nothing more satisfying than being like – BAM! Dropping a man to his knees with these guns –" She flexed her biceps again " - and seeing the look of humiliation and terror on his face right before I own his sorry butt!"

Seifer hid a smile by pulling up his thermal mask. "If you say so."

A tumbledown shack with a hand painted placard and a boarded-up window was Whelby's answer to a convenience store, though it wasn't particularly convenient. Selphie and Seifer's downbeat scrutiny didn't go unnoticed by the middle-aged woman behind the till, who curtly confirmed the missing delivery.

"Meant t' come yesterday," she drawled as she tapped a chewed pencil against the crossword in a newspaper. "Probably monsters."

"Hey, hey! D'ya think it was the dragons?" Selphie exclaimed. "'Cause we can find 'em and beat their butts for ya!"

The woman levelled the pair with an amused look. "You two? Hmph. I don't want the death of you lovers on my conscience."

Seifer visibly baulked. "Listen here, lady, we ain't –"

"We get deliveries from Trabia City, so they come up from the South, main road, with a small envoy." The woman frowned at the crossword puzzle again and added offhandedly, "They're normally pretty reliable, so yeah, I would say something's amiss."

Selphie went to salute, then caught herself and scratched her neck. "Mission accepted, captain! We'll find your missing shipment and take care of your dragon problem!"

"Hang on a minute, I didn't ask for your help," Greta said. "And I sure as hells ain't payin' ya."

Seifer leaned on the counter with an air of nonchalant menace. "So what are you gonna do when your delivery doesn't arrive? Wait for another? Heh. You think anyone else is gonna come? Once the news spreads of dragons on the road, nobody is gonna risk their necks for this hick outpost."

Greta spluttered. "Well – they – they wouldn't just leave –"

"Sure they would. Ain't worth the risk. And then what? What would happen to this store? You'd have to get the deliveries yourself…" He gave her a sharky grin. "Have you ever seen a Blue Dragon up close, Greta?"

"Someone would… the city wouldn't just… SeeD would help us –"

Seifer barked out a genuine laugh. "Oh yeah? You know how much SeeD would charge for something like that? You happen to have that kind of money layin' around?"

Greta chewed on this for a moment, then threw up her hands. "Fine! Bring back the delivery and I'll give ya twenty-five percent off all the goods."

"Fifty percent," Seifer said.

"Thirty –"

"We don't want money off, or money full stop!" Selphie cut in, exasperated. "Just… if we do this… we just ask that you remember what we've done. You… You catch my drift?"

Greta's gaze ping-ponged between the two, then she shrugged. "People in this town are terribly forgetful."

"So we've heard," Seifer said. "Give us whatever healing items you have left."

"We'll pay for them," Selphie said, spearing Seifer with a cross look while reaching for her purse. "You take card?"

Her supplies were meagre, but certainly nothing to be sniffed at, and Selphie was particularly relieved to see the antidotes and phoenix downs. She took them graciously and said goodbye, while Seifer leaned over the counter and tapped the crossword row she was stuck on. "It's 'excalibur', by the way," he told her snidely.

They returned to the streets again and Selphie smacked him on the arm. "You don't have to be such a _total_ ass all the time, ya know?"

"I know."

She waggled a finger in his face. "Well, maybe you should start listening to good advice! Bein' nice can get you a long way!"

Seifer scoffed, rammed their supplies into a rucksack, then started the trek towards the main road. "Says who? It's never gotten me anywhere. Anyway, we got what we wanted."

Selphie trailed after him. "Mm. I hope it'll be enough."

Seifer glanced sideways at her. "You scared?"

"Not for me…"

"The deliveries guys are probably dead by now."

"I wasn't talking about them."

He barked out a laugh. "_Me_?"

"I guess. Like, what if you get hit with the magic and you… y'know. Turn hollow again?"

"Then you're right to be scared."

_I'm not scared for myself, you dumb-dumb_. She shook her head, then grinned brightly and fist pumped. "Hah! What am I talking about? Team Mayhem will never be stopped -"

"Please don't name us –"

"-by a few dragons and sorceress curses! 'Cause we'll end 'em before they even know what hit 'em, and then I'll turn 'em into sausages and syrup and serve 'em up to their children, so they'll be eatin' their own parents and not even know, and then I'll tell 'em and they'll be so traumatised they'll commit suicide by chewing out their stomachs, and then we'll wear their skins as trophies!"

The pair fell quiet.

"…Tilmitt?" Seifer said.

"Yeah?"

"You have issues."

"…I know."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

* * *

"No prizes for guessing right what happened to the delivery guys."

The blood was hard to miss. Jarring scarlet against a white canvas of snow and a soup of miscellaneous innards. It was both a blessing and a curse that the sub-zero temperatures preserved the body parts; it stopped them from stinking of rot, but also made for some pretty unpleasant roadside décor.

"Icky," Tilmitt said, as she toed an ambiguous lump of half-clothed flesh. "No whole bodies though. D'ya think the dragon dragged 'em off?"

Seifer was inspecting the brush beyond the treeline. "Likely. Sorely was wrong about them being migratory but it's an understandable assumption; they always have dens but their territory spans miles. Here. There's tracks."

"Not hard to find." Tilmitt sprang over the brush to join him. "Shall we follow?"

"Might as well. Did you see the delivery?"

"Yep! It's spread across the road, but most of it's intact."

"Anything useful?"

"…Are naughty magazines useful?"

"Great." Seifer huffed. "Not like we can carry much else anyway. We should've brought a sled."

"There are a lot of naughty magazines…"

"Godammit, Tilmitt." Seifer peered at the sky through the canopy. It was beginning to snow. "Let's just get this over with before the tracks are covered."

Tilmitt saluted. "Roger!"

The trail snaked through the forest into deep snow and fickle terrain. Snowfall dimmed visibility, though Seifer wasn't overly concerned about that. Blue Dragons were not stealth hunters; their encounter would be heralded loudly and aggressively. He pined for Hyperion once again as he thumbed the vials of health strapped to his belt and tsked. _Reduced to back up. I've never been back up…_

"What's your plan?" he called to Tilmitt. "You have a GF?... Tilmitt?"

He looked behind him in time to catch his partner swinging off a low hanging branch. Snow pelted her from above as she swung back and forth like a monkey, and her exalted 'Yipppeeee' cut straight through his brain.

Seifer stared at her. "I'm beginning to think you idiots won the war by annoying Ultimecia to death."

Tilmitt hopped to the ground and passed him a solemn look. "Oh no. That was serious. That was perseverance and power."

"And taking on a Blue Dragon alone isn't?"

Her serious demeanour split with a grin. "I'm not alone! I've got you!"

"For what good I'll do," he retorted, not swayed by her compliment.

She waggled a finger at him. "Don't try to butt in! I'll be in a whole lotta trouble if you use magic, and if it turns real bad just get outta here –"

"I'm not takin' orders from you," Seifer said, gnashing on frustration, "and I'm not gonna leave you to die, idiot. You really think I'm that big of an asshole? I'm gonna die anyway so it doesn't make a difference to me whether it's out here or in an Estharian cell." He mulled this over. "In fact, I'd rather it was out here in battle –"

"Don't get any ideas!" Tilmitt said. "Anyway, I trust in your support abilities. I have Alexander too, though I'm not gonna summon him."

"It'd be faster."

"Yeah, duh. But that level of cray-cray magical fallout might trigger your hollowficiation, so I'm gonna do it the old-fashioned way." She winked. "The fun way!"

He smirked despite himself. "That much we can agree on."

"Tee hee! I got Death junctioned to my status, which should take 'im out pretty quick – sometimes even with one hit!" She pulled a face. "I got drafted into fang hunting for Squall's Lionheart model. It was borrrring."

Seifer harrumphed. "How pathetic, couldn't even hunt for his own gunblade parts."

"Squall just understands the power of friendship and loooooove!" She hugged herself and twirled on the spot. "I'm sure Raijin and Fujin would help you fight dragons if you asked, right?"

He blanched, unnerved by the sharp pang of pain at the mention of their names. He shook it away, unconsciously reached for Hyperion, then huffed and strode past her. "C'mon. Snow's gettin' heavier."

The trek was a tricky one with the weather and mountain's incline against them. The absence of smaller monsters was an indication of the dragon's presence, but a blessing for them, as their trek continued unimpeded.

Eventually the snow covered the blood, but the brush offered more signs – raked claw marks on trunks, dung piles and damaged brush – and they followed this trail to where the ground met the mountain's craggy bulk.

"Over there," Selphie hissed, and Seifer followed the direction of her pointed finger.

An entrance into the mines. An old one, by the looks of it, previously boarded up with rotten planks that had since been smashed to splinters by the dragon.

Before Seifer could question Tilmitt's plan, she bounded over to the entrance, poked her head in, and called out a jovial: "Hellllooo in theerrree!"

Seifer pounced on her. "What the _fuck are you doing!?"_

"Calling for the dragon?" She wriggled out of his grasp and jabbed a finger inside the entrance. "Did ya hear that echo? These tunnels must go on for miles."

"Or _down_ for miles," Seifer said distastefully. "What was your plan anyway? Just call 'em out?"

"Well, duh. I don't wanna go in there. Do you?"

"No…"

She threw him a smarmy grin over her shoulder. "Are ya scared? I thought you were all for act first, ask questions later."

"No, that's the kinda dumb shit Zell would do and get himself killed. I may be the first one in, but I _always_ have a plan."

She rolled her eyes. "Alright, Captain Cocksure. I just think you're not so tough without that gunblade of yours."

"And you're not so tough without your GFs," Seifer countered.

"Touché. Anywho, I'm still gonna try to lure him out. I'm more comfortable fightin' in the snow than I am in pokey little mining tunnels. Help me out, would ya?"

She picked up one of the broken planks and began hitting it against the entrance, alternatively yelling and cooing as though the dragon was a giant housecat. Seifer took a step back, tucked his freezing fingers under his armpits, and watched her make an idiot out of herself. On the bright side, presenting Tilmitt's chewed up remains to that pervert cowboy would possibly make this worth the trouble of freezing half to death.

After ten minutes of calling, Tilmitt gave up and tossed aside the plank. "ARRRGHHH! What's wrong with that big dumb lizard!?"

"You've probably irritated it to death already. In fact, that's probably how I'm gonna die. Kinda feel sorry it."

Tilmitt tugged her braids and jumped up and down. "OooHHHoooHHHHH I'm like, really REALLY MAD NOW! We came all this way and he won't even show his cowardly blue butt! I'm gonna go in there and drag him out!"

Seifer grabbed her hood before she could stomp away. "Oh no you're not. This part of the mine is condemned. You'll get lost, or worse, run into that dragon and not have maneuverability during battle."

Selphie pouted. "What do you suggest then, Mister Smarty-pants?"

"Wait. It will come back out to hunt again eventually. We can take shelter in the –"

A flock of birds took flight from the brush to their right. The pair whirled in time to see branches shudder and shed their weight of snow, then with a thunderous crack a trunk was toppled, making way for its scaly logger.

Seifer had seen his fair share of Rubys and a few other lesser species, but this was his first time seeing a Blue. It certainly wasn't as giant as some of its brother breeds, but it still towered above them at a cool ten feet. It reared up on its hind legs, azure scales catching the sun, and exhaled green gas through its nostrils.

Hardly intimidated, Tilmit hopped forward into its line of sight. "WOO-HOO! Found ya!"

"More like he found you," Seifer said, taking a begrudgingly step out of the crossfire.

Tilmitt whipped out her nunchaku as the dragon rocketed forward with an enraged roar. She cut a dollish figure at the dragon's feet, a pale slip of a girl with bouncing braids and an impish smile, but of course, Seifer knew better.

Tilmitt leaped into battle, wielding her nunchaku with a master's ease, as the dragon whipped its tail, crunched its menacing jaws, and body slammed the ground mere seconds before she skipped nimbly out of the way. She anticipated its attacks and dealt blows to soft points in its scaly hide with the sort of practiced efficiently that gave credibility to her story about farming parts for Leonhart's gunblade.

It wasn't long before her nimble dancing wore the beast out, and Seifer had to begrudgingly admit he was impressed. Tilmitt couldn't have been far off the final blow.

As if sensing its imminent defeat, the great dragon puffed up and inhaled freezing air through its nostrils. Tilmit wrinkled her nose and leapt back but couldn't escape the reach of its attack as it exhaled plumes of poisonous gas between its toothy maws. Selphie staggered backwards, her ilk turning decidedly green.

Seifer unlatched an antidote from his belt and thumbed off the cap. He stepped forward to engage in battle, but Selphie's wide eyed look of terror stopped him. Her shrill warning of "Look out!" came too late as Seifer was hit from behind by a magic attack, and he turned to see that a second Blue Dragon had emerged from the mine's entrance.

He felt the curious discomfort of being hit by a Drain spell. Energy leeched from his limbs and his heart lurched to a temporary halt in his chest, but even more disconcertingly, he felt a shroud of dark magic fall across his mind. He shook it off with effort, recited Garden protocols like a mantra until his thoughts straightened, and when the darkness lifted from his vision he was on his back in the snow with Tilmitt squatted over him.

"We better get out of here!" she yelled. "I can't believe this! They're both – ahhh!" She was cut off as a wave of frozen turf pelted them from above.

The two Blue Dragons were locked in territorial combat, gauging each other's flanks with wicked talons and teeth, and wrapped in a pall of status magic that made Seifer dizzy.

"Let's get out of here and recon," Selphie said.

"Summon!" Seifer hissed.

"No, it'll push you over the edge. We can get out of here while they're distracted!"

Feeling out of sorts, he climbed unsteadily to his feet, and felt Selphie's helping arm around his waist. He was about to shake her off when he realised it was more _her_ leaning on _him_ for support.

Right. He was never great at back up.

"Here…Antidote," he wheezed, groping for the second vial in his belt.

One of the dragons whipped its tail around, swept the pair off their feet, and launched them into the rocky cliff face. The dragons became knotted in battle again, howling nightmares and savaging each other limb from limb, as Seifer staggered to his feet and searched for Tilmitt. He found her not far to his left, face down in the snow, and wasting no time, he hoisted her unconscious form over his shoulder and ran.

The second dragon prevailed over the first and crushed its skull beneath the great claws of its hind leg. It flexed its wings and roared its victory to the sky, then turned its rage to the much smaller creatures trying to flee.

Seifer grimaced. There was no way he could outrun the dragon with Tilmitt in tow. Only one option left, then.

With the tremors of the dragon's pursuit reverberating under his feet, he all but threw himself into the mine, dropped Tilmitt, then spun around to face it. Flexing his fingers, he tapped into Ultimecia's dormant magic.

The power came to him easily, but of course it did. It wasn't Ultimecia's anymore; it was his, and with a rush of glorious adrenalin he threw out his hands.

Fiery magic exploded against the dragon's jaws just as it ploughed through the entrance. It bellowed in pain, reared up, and smashed its head against the overhanging scaffolding. There was an almighty crack and a groan deep from the mountain's bowels, then the scaffolding split apart and dropped the weight of the great boulders from its shoulders.

Seifer leapt back and covered Tilmitt's insensate body with his own, baring the brunt of the fallout, and barely avoided sharing the same fate as the dragon as it was crushed beneath the cave in.

Drowned in darkness and choking on dust, he dragged Tilmitt further into the tunnel, away from another potential cave in. His thoughts were dangling ornaments out of reach; it was only sheer resolve and years of training that drove his hand to the last antidote vial in his belt, and he doused her with tonic until her pallor returned.

Seifer staggered to his feet, gripping his head, as his whole body thrummed with magic. He felt like he was coming undone at the seams, unravelling like a frayed rope, like the magic was eating him. Killing him.

_Not good. Gotta get away._

He stumbled towards the nearest tunnel and became lost in the darkness.

* * *

Selphie awoke some time later, choking and gasping like a woman half-drowned. Her lungs were on fire and her mouth was dry as dust – no, it was _literally_ full of dust. She rolled stiffly onto her knees and spat onto the ground.

Her mind rehearsed SeeD protocol. First: current status. No obvious injuries other than extreme fatigue, headache and nausea; the side effects of Poisoning. Second: immediate personal safety. There were no dragons that she was aware of nearby. Not that she could tell because it was totally utterly dark. But also totally utterly silent. So. That was a good thing. Maybe? Thirdly: status of party members.

She sat back unsteadily on her rump, massaging her temples, and tried to call Seifer's name. All that came out was a strangled croak, so she groped for the water canteen on her belt, drank, then tried again.

"Sei…fer? Seifer?"

Even her meagre whisper was met by echoes. It was kinda creepy, actually. At least, she would have been creeped out if she wasn't so concerned with finding a Seifer-shaped corpse nearby.

She rooted around in her backpack and pulled out a flashlight. After a few knocks on the ground it flickered on and illuminated the twisted maws of a Blue Dragon. Selphie gasped in terror but before fighting instinct could kick in, she realised it was dead, trapped beneath what looked like a cave in.

Slowly the mystery of her situation lifted and was replaced by a mantle of dread. She was trapped in a derelict mine and her partner was MIA.

She tried to convince herself that he'd gone to get help, or had been outside when the collapse had happened, but there was a potent stink of magic in the stale air… dark, familiar magic. The sort that still tinged her nightmares. The sort she prayed she would never feel again.

Maybe Blue Dragons and cave-ins were the least of her problems.

She stood on wobbly legs and cast a quick Curaga to repair the damage from the Poison. The nausea didn't dissipate entirely but at least her fingers and toes weren't numb anymore. She considered her options.

Plan A: Blast another hole in the mountain, get out and get help, come back for Seifer later. Cons: Could cause another cave in. Pros: explosions? Although, it was probably dark outside and minus temperatures so she wouldn't stand a chance if she got lost. Or ran into another dragon, for that matter.

Plan B…

Selphie cast the torchlight down the nearest tunnel. Curtains of dust danced in the beam that did little to illuminate the passages. It was utterly silent and still. Creepy factor: a solid ten.

Selphie bit her lip. She wasn't scared of the dark, or of being trapped, or of small spaces, but she was kinda scared of hollow Seifer. Moreso, she feared losing him. What if he came across monsters? Or fell? Or was trapped? Injured? Would he last until morning?

Selphie fluffed herself up and smacked the torch against her palm, causing it to flicker. "Are you just gonna abandon your partner, ya coward?"

The mines threw back her admonishment in fragmented echoes, like a challenge.

Selphie accepted.

* * *

The mine was a vast network of interlacing tunnels that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to their direction, leaving Selphie feeling considerably disorientated, unsure of whether she was venturing deeper or just walking in circles. Abandoned relics of its past littered Selphie's path – pickaxes, shovels, drills, paperwork and excavated rock – while dark wires snaked across the ceiling, connecting naked bulbs cloaked in cobwebs. Dragon claw marks razed the walls and floor, punctuated by the stink of dragon shit, territorial spray and Poison gas, though thankfully there was no sign of any other living inhabitants. Just the unsettling echo of her footsteps following her down the tunnels.

It wasn't long until Selphie spotted human-shaped tracks in the thick layer of dust and dirt. Was he hollow already? Or had he left anticipating hollowfication? She drew her nunchaku just in case and clamped the torch between her teeth. At least this time she would be prepared.

She recalled her first orienteering assignment, back at T-Garden. She'd been twelve years old and had been escorted blindfolded to the forest at night, with only the thermals on her back, her weapon and a flashlight. It was a long, dark, freezing night, that one. T-Garden did not return to fetch cadets; they had to return alone. It was a do or die mission, one of many kept from public knowledge and normally reserved for those without parents.

_Lucky us._

Sure, it had been a bad time (she'd got frostbite and a nasty scar from a mesmerize), but it had taught Selphie how to stay calm and focussed on survival, even in the most extreme of environments. And it had taught her perseverance. Taught her she could do anything.

And if she could conquer that, she could conquer this mine. She could conquer anything, dammit!

A thought seeped between the cracks in her focus._ So why can't you conquer your own mind?_

She stopped, then stomped her foot. _Not now. Later. Think about that later._

The tunnel widened into a smallish, manmade cavern that looked to have once been the hub of mining activity, perhaps a break room of sorts, judging by the rotten benches and abandoned safety gear, and had since been repurposed as a dragon's den. Benches had been smashed to pieces and dragged into the centre of the room to form a primitive nest, and it was here that Selphie found the delivery guys, or what was left of them, at least. She counted three arms, a chewed up torso and maybe half a thigh or something – she wasn't about to go rooting around that closely. The whole place was rancid.

A skittish movement snatched her attention. She panned the torch in time to reflect the glare of Seifer's egg-white eyes before he knocked her off her feet with a running tackle. She landed amidst the body parts and bones and Seifer was on her before she could react.

The torch was knocked out of her mouth and became wedged between two planks of wood, throwing a spotlight onto the ceiling and casting enough light that Selphie could see Seifer's silhouette. He had pinned her easily with his knees and had both hands firmly on her nunchaku, trying to wrench the weapon out of her grasp. He was emitting enough heat to rival Ifrit and only the ghostly white of his eyes glinted in the dark.

Of course, this wasn't the first man who thought they could disarm smaller, weaker Selphie.

She kicked him three times in the stomach and twice in the ribs and bit his wrist before he finally relented, then she rolled to miss the punch he aimed at her face. She winced on his behalf at the sickening crack of his knuckles on rock, before springing to her feet and using her nunchaku to aim a hit towards his head.

He swung around with frightening speed and blocked the blow with his forearm. She yanked the nunchaku back before he could grab it, whirled and swung again. There was a crunch when her nunchaku met his ribs, but he ploughed forward unperturbed, so she lurched back, shifted her grip on the nunchaku and swung underhand, catching him on the chin. He staggered backwards, stunned, and her gut twisted. Another blow like that and he could bite through his own tongue.

"Seifer, snap out of it!" she yelled. The cavern threw back her words like banshees screaming in the night. "You're stronger than this! Don't give in to it!"

He swung at her again and this time his knuckles caught her cheekbone. She staggered, followed the momentum and spun with her nunchaku, hoping for an overhead blow that would knock him out.

He grabbed the nunchaku and with inhumane strength wrenched them out of her hands. Three of the fingers on her left hand dislocated and she bit down a yelp of pain. He threw her weapon to the side and it clattered noisily among the bones, but she was not afforded the chance to find them before he was on her again.

Hand to hand combat saved her from the worst of his punches as she alternated between deflecting, agility and desperation. A small voice in the back of her mind screamed that she was holding back and she better stop that _right now_ otherwise she'd be joining the delivery guys in the bone pile, but that voice was drowned out by the smell of wet sand and summer thunderstorms and a sickly sweet weakness inside her chest.

She leapt back and he followed her, both arms shooting out to grab her by the throat.

_Gotcha._

A golden aura painted her skin in brilliant light, and she grabbed both his wrists not a breath away from her face with unnatural, GF fuelled strength. Icy magic seeped from her fingers and around his wrists, crept up his arms and locked his elbows. The flames of his magic would not melt them.

"Stop it!" she spat at him. "This isn't you! _She_ isn't you! I don't care if you think you're going to die – I don't believe it! I won't believe it!"

Their bodies trembled beneath the strain of their combined magic. His fingers brushed her throat and burned her skin. The ice cracked on his right elbow. She gritted her teeth, boots skidding backwards in the dirt as he increased his efforts. His eyes were steaming white in the darkness, his face a dark mask of shadows.

He was stronger than her.

Selphie bit her lip, feeling the sting of tears. "Please, Seifer. I don't wanna kill you but –"

The ice cracked. Alexander roared inside her mind, demanding to be summoned. Her magic waned and the golden light of her aura began to recede. Selphie closed her eyes, then opened them again, spearing Seifer with her most perilous gaze.

"Just… SNAP OUT OF IT YA JERK!"

She shoved both his arms apart, breaking the ice, then threw herself past his guard and kissed him.

Her lips burned and blistered under his, bright with pain, and she could smell his terrible magic – singed feathers and charcoal – but he tasted like pancakes and coffee. Normal. Not crazy or psychotic or murderous or hollow or whatever. Just like the boy she'd grown up with on a beach.

_What…_

_What in the name of Mog's fluffy ballbags AM I DOING!?_

"Nnggh…"

Selphie leapt away from Seifer and was surprised when he didn't pursue her. His hands dropped to his sides and he swayed on the spot, groaning.

Selphie absently raised a hand to her throbbing lips and took a ginger step forward. "Seifer…?"

"Ugh… nnn…. S…Se-l… Tilmitt…? What…"

Selphie cleared the space between them and snared him in a bear hug. "Oh em geeeee, it TOTALLY WORKED! BOOYAKA! WOOOO-HOOOO! TEAM MAYHEM WINS AGAIN!"

"Ah- ah! Tilmitt my fuckin' ribs, Tilmitt, _stop_ –"

She hopped away. "Eeee sorry, sorry! I'm just so happy! I thought you were a goner and I totally didn't think that through it was like, total impulse but hey, it worked and I –"

"What? What are you talking about?"

Selphie cocked her head and grinned. "Uh… Nothing! I mean, I just… head butted you. And broke your ribs. And froze you. And some other stuff. It's not important! The important thing is you're _you_ again!"

Seifer hunched forward in the dark, massaging his ribs. "Did I… Are you hurt?"

"Oh, um, I'm fine! Well, except for the three dislocated fingers and multiple burns but other than that TOTALLY FINE, so don't worry, okay?"

Seifer took a step toward her and exhaled sharply. When he spoke his voice with tight with rage. "Tilmitt, you are seriously mentally unhinged. Why do you think I went deeper into the mines? For fun? To start a mining business?"

"…Yes?"

"It was to keep. You. _Safe_. I would have – no, I _will_ kill you if you keep following me. Do you understand? How many times do I have to almost strangle you to death before you get it?"

"I do get it!" Selphie exclaimed. "I followed you knowing what would happen! But like, if I didn't come after you then no one would, and I couldn't just leave you here in this sucky mine. Partners don't just ditch each other."

"I'm not worth risking your life over. I told you, I'm going to d-"

"I don't care!" she yelled, sticking her fingers in her ears. "So stop saying that! You're SUCH a party pooper. Just be grateful I'm as stubborn as I am beautiful and _accept the darn compliment_! Now can we pleeassse get out of here. It smells like the toilet of a morgue after a chilli party and my fingers realllly hurt. Also I'm hungry. Do you want hamburgers? I really want hamburgers."

Seifer massaged his temple with two fingers, shoulders sagging. "I just… wanna get out of this mine."

"Right! Okay! Action plan! If we keep to the outskirts of the mine, we should come across the active part eventually, or at least another entrance. There are emergency exit signs hanging on the walls in some areas, so we can just follow them."

"Fine."

_He must be feeling pretty low,_ Selphie reckoned, _for him to be so agreeable._ "Take a potion, okay? You got broken ribs and probably some other stuff you're not tellin' me about –"

"I'm fine. We're movin' out. Now."

He brushed past her and into the tunnels before she could protest. She reclaimed her torch and nunchaku and followed him.

She touched the ring of blisters on her throat from where his fingertips had scalded her, then her burned lips. For him to radiate such intense elemental qualities testified not only to the power of raw magic compared to paramagic, but the control he had over it. It took serious discipline to wield the elements; it wasn't uncommon for unruly, careless cadets to spontaneously combust or freeze to death. Selphie had heard tales of people's core body temperatures rising to the point where they literally boiled alive in their own skin, or alternatively succumbed to hypothermia, yet wielding such intense magic seemed second nature to Seifer. Like it was a part of him.

Maybe Odine was right, maybe there wasn't a way to extract Ultimecia's magic…

Selphie patted her cheek with the torch. _Stop right there, Negative Nancy. We totally got this! _

The meandering tunnels grew less destitute as they ventured further into the mountain. Every now and then Selphie thought she heard the distant tock-tock-tock of a pickaxe, but they never came across anyone, and she wondered if the mine was haunted. Although, she would rather stumble across a thousand vengeful ghosts than one possessed Seifer, that's for sure.

"Hey, d'ya think there's any more dragons in the mine?" Selphie called to him.

She watched his shadowy silhouette shrug. "I would be surprised if there were. Maybe in the woods, though."

"We can patrol the roads to make sure it's safe!"

"Are you insane? Didn't you just see what happened?"

"I mean yeah, but we were just unlucky there were two in the area fightin' over territory. I could've taken that one down –"

"Not the dragons. With me. It's too risky for me to go, and you can't go alone. The miners will have to make do without their deliveries for now."

Selphie pouted, but decided not to push the subject. He was doing a poor job at hiding a limp, but kept a steady pace, obviously keen to leave. She didn't blame him. She wanted to be back in the cabin, by the fireplace, with a mug of hot cocoa, her chocobo plush and a blankie.

"How did you snap me out of it anyway?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"The hollowfiication. You were punching me last time, but this time you were just standing in front of me. What did you do?"

Selphie withered. "Oh, um. You know. Usual stuff. Combat stuff. Word games. Psychological manipulation… bribery… and stuff. You know? Just stuff."

She caught his puzzled and impatient expression in the flashlight beam. "Why are you bein' weird about it?"

"I-I'm not being weird!"

He spun on his heel so abruptly she almost bumped into him. She pressed the flashlight to her chest, dousing their faces in stark shadow and light.

"Fine," he said. "Don't tell me. But at least tell Odine. It might be useful information." He narrowed his eyes. "And don't do anything too… weird. It already sucks enough not being able to control myself or remember what happened without you doing weird shit to me while I'm out."

Selphi flailed with the flashlight. "Whhhaaaaa? Why are you sayin' it like that!? As if I would do anything weird! Wh-why would you even think that? Or say it? It's weird that you're saying it. You've made this weird. You're the weird one. That's -"

"Did you kiss me?"

Selphie's innards turned to freezing slush and tried to evacuate through her feet. "Whu-wh-what!? WHAT!? No! NOOOOO. Noooooo. No! As if I would – I would never – I mean as if I even – as if we'd even –"

Seifer shut his eyes and exhaled deeply, then plucked the torch out of her hands. "We're not going to speak of this ever again."

Selphie wilted. "…Okay."

And with that he turned sharply on his heel and stomped away.

Selphie decided it best to stay silent as she followed him through the mines. Utter mortification couldn't begin to summarise how she felt, but since he didn't seem open to either an explanation or apology, she accepted his smouldering silence without question. If anything, he was probably embarrassed, and pushing the subject would likely deepen his foul mood.

They soon came across a boarded up doorway with a dirt encrusted exit sign above its frame. Before Selphie could act, Seifer launched his bulk against the boards, once – twice – three times.

"Your ribs!" Selphie protested lamely, but it was too late. The boards gave way to the bitter night beyond, where a full moon dusted pale light across paler snow. It was deathly cold.

"Maybe we should stay here until morning," she suggested, eyeing Seifer's wounds uneasily. "Light a fire, sleep inside the mines where it's sheltered. If we get lost –"

"We won't get lost," Seifer said, stepping out into the night. "It's still early. Let's just get back. I don't wanna see another mine ever again in my entire life. However long that'll be."

On that much, at least, Selphie could agree on.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

The mine's exit had taken them farther down the mountain, considerably shortening their trek, and Seifer was glad for it. He was struggling to keep his weight on his left knee, his broken ribs throbbed with pain, and various body parts ached from blows inflicted by Tilmitt's nunchaku. A fierce magic-induced migraine tore fresh chasms through his brain and scattered flashing stars across his vision, fragmenting his thoughts and concentration.

On top of everything, he felt… depressed. A pathetic, brooding ailment that was ill suited to someone like him, but there you had it. The heaviness in his chest had crept up on him slowly and now he could ignore it no more than he could the migraine.

Why? It wasn't so much his imminent death or broken dreams. It was the lack of control. In both the present and the past. He'd always thought he'd been in control; top of each class, head of the DC, fawned over and scored at his whim. He had cut a powerful figure in Garden and for a brief moment in time, perhaps the entire world. But he'd been used and tossed aside and had likewise used and tossed aside the few people who had cared for him. And now? Now, he didn't even know who he was anymore, and it probably didn't matter either.

These musings turned him sour. He would die in this Leonhart state, all sulky and full of miserable existential thoughts. He couldn't think of anything worse.

_I should have died beside Ultimecia,_ he thought. _The way a knight should die. This hollowing is a shameful affliction for failed knights. It's a punishment._

Seifer had never tolerated punishment. He exacted punishment, not the other way round.

His depression abated into rage.

Good. He could handle rage.

"Hey, slow down, would ya?"

He whirled on Selphie and knocked away the hand she'd laid on his arm. She took a step back, startled by his sudden change of mood. The moonlight worked to deepen the bruises, blisters and burns peppering her throat and face. Injuries _he_ had caused.

Shame and anger swirled into a confusing brew in his gut. He wanted to hit her, kill her. He wanted to… He didn't know. But whatever he wanted he didn't deserve to have it.

"I'm going," he said. "Don't follow me." He prowled away into the forest.

"H-hey! What do you mean? Seifer! Where are you going? You can't just… Your wounds! Hey! Oooh, don't ignore me, ya big lug! Get back here! Don't… don't make me come and get you!"

He barked out a laugh but didn't stop. The forest spread out before him, stark slices of snow-white and shadows beneath the fir canopy, deathly silent. Branches and snow crunched under his boots. His fingers and feet were numb. His heart raced. If he stayed out here he'd be dead by the morning, and he didn't care. It was a frightening and exhilarating feeling.

A hand on his arm. "Seifer! Please stop. Don't do this."

He whirled on her. "Don't follow me."

"You know I have to."

"Why? Because Squall told you to?"

"No! No. This hasn't got anything to do with SeeD. Seifer, you're my friend I'm not just going to –"

"We are not _friends_," he snarled. "Or anything else for that matter. I don't know who you think you are or what you think this is, but you're going to get over it right now. Let me go."

A change came over her, then, as if someone had lifted a veil away from her face. Her whole demeanour shifted into something unfamiliar; her expression fell away and became stony. Tough. Unsmiling. And yet… oddly vulnerable.

It occurred to him suddenly that maybe he was seeing the real Selphie for the first time.

"You want to give up?" she said. "Fine. Go. I won't stop you. But I won't leave you, either. I'll come with you and stay until the end." She looked to the side, at the dark forest behind him. "But I'm sad about it. And disappointed. More in myself than with you…I thought if I saved you then maybe I could save myself. Maybe I could get better. Maybe I could move on from SeeD. But maybe… maybe I don't have the will to fight anymore, either. And if I can't fight for myself then what right do I have to fight for you?"

He stared at her. Something unfamiliar beat his chest. Seifer had never seen himself as equal to anyone; he'd never sought for or found a kindred spirit in even his closest companions, but for the first time, he saw a reflection of himself in someone else, a spark of humanity he'd thought Garden had snuffed out in him long ago.

He followed her gaze to the forest. It looked back at him; silent and cold, patient and eternal.

It could wait.

_Fighting, then,_ he thought. _Fighting until the end._

There seemed a small honour in that, and it comforted him.

"Fine," he said. "I'll keep at it until I can't anymore. And then I'll leave it up to you."

She looked up him with saucer eyes. "You can trust me."

"I know."

She surprised him with a hug that was too soft to earn a complaint from his ribs. He tolerated it for a heartbeat, long enough to reluctantly acknowledge the comfort in it, then brusquely pushed her away. "Alright, there's no need to be a sap about it. You always gotta make it weird."

"_You're_ weird," she bleated, then abruptly blinked at a spot behind him "Hey, what's that?"

He turned warily, peering into the darkness. They were in no condition to ward off another attack. "What?"

Selphie sucked in air, then let out a shaky cry of dismay. "Oh no…"

"_What_, dammit?"

Selphie padded through the snow to a spot obscured by thick brush, then dropped to a crouch and hugged her knees. He approached her cautiously, thoroughly confused, until he realised that the dark stains on the ground were not shadow.

Selphie was staring at the carcass of a dead chocobo. Its feathers were brilliant gold even in the dark, trimmed with moonlight, and its dark eyes were glassy and sightless. It had been gutted and partly eaten by some greater predator, maybe the Blue Dragons from earlier, then partially buried in the snow.

Even to Seifer it was an unsettling sight. Chocobo were one of the few native creatures left on the planet that were intelligent, companionable and endangered to boot. It was a sorry sight.

Selphie was crying silently. He didn't understand why she was so upset over a dead bird, but offered an awkward, "Damn shame."

"It's really bad luck to find a dead chocobo," she hiccupped.

"That's a stupid Trabian superstition," he said. "It's nature. It happens."

"Buh-but it's a chocobo…"

"The strong live and the weak die. That's life," Seifer said a bit too harshly, staring down at the corpse.

He kicked at the turf while he waited for Selphie to finish mourning or reflecting on some metaphor or something, and found his boot overturning some downy feathers and twigs. "What's this?"

Selphie looked morosely over her shoulder, then squinted intently at the darkness at his feet. She gasped and sprang forward, then began to dig. He watched nonplussed as feathers and brush pattered around his feet, until finally she grunted and tried to prise free something wedged in the freezing dirt. It popped loose and she fell backwards onto her behind, cradling her discovery in her arms.

"Look! Look, look, look!" she crowed. "This is a sign! It's definitely a sign! For sure! Oh my gosh I've never ever seen one in the wild! Can you believe it! Oh my gooosshhh!"

Seifer thumbed on his flashlight and pointed it first at Selphie's face, beaming with delight, then at the bundle in her arms. He blinked uncertainly a few times. "Is that… an egg?"

Selphie stood up. "Of course it is, you dummy! What else would it be?"

He'd never seen a chocobo egg before. It was huge, as large as a man's head, pristine white and speckled with blue spots.

"It's warm," Selphie said excitedly. "We have to look after it! This is definitely a sign. It's what the mama chocobo would have wanted."

"Now don't get carried away. You don't even –"

"Are you just gonna leave it here?" she accused furiously.

"I didn't say that. I just –"

"Then it's decided! Here, you take it. You can keep it warm much better than I can. Put your magic to good use."

"Wha – hey! For fuck's sake, Tilmitt, just –" But she dumped the egg into his arms before he could protest. He fumbled; it was heavier than it looked, or maybe he was just tired. She was right though; it was warm.

"Trabian chocobo bury their eggs to keep them safe from the cold," Tilmitt told him. "This one must have died trying to protect its nest…"

Seifer watched while she rooted around in the nest for a while, stuffing feathers down the front of her jacket and into her pockets, then she turned to the dead chocobo and rested a hand on the side of its head. "I… I'm sorry this happened to you. But you can rest peacefully now. Team Mayhem will keep your baby safe. I promise… We promise."

Seifer felt like he should complain, but found he didn't have the energy. Instead, he adjusted his grip on the egg and said, "We should head back. It's gettin' colder."

Selphie turned to him, looking bright eyed and hopeful, and for once it wasn't ingenuine. He was glimpsing her expression stripped bare of its mask.

"Yeah," she said. "Let's go home."

* * *

Seifer never thought he'd be pleased to see the shack, but anything was better than the numbing wind and heavy snowfall. Why anyone would choose to live in such a hellhole was beyond him.

The headache was passing but his injuries were still painful, so he peeled off his thermals with no small amount of care before gingerly sinking into the couch and closing his eyes.

He'd taken for granted the healing magic and potions of Garden. A strong curaga would banish the pain in a heartbeat and knit together fractures overnight, but even the potions were imbued with magic so would do him no good. Now he had to heal the old-fashioned way.

"Head's up!"

Something hit his chest and rebounded into his lap with a rattle. Seifer cracked open an eye, then picked up the small box and read the label. "Aspirin?"

Selphie didn't look up from what she was doing, but nodded and waved a hand. "Better than nothing, hey? I know you can't use any of the usual curatives so…"

He shook out four of the tablets and swallowed them whole. "Thanks."

After a moment he eased himself up and painfully stoked the fire until the flames roared to life, then hung their thermals on a rail in front of it. He thought about eating but didn't have the motivation or energy. As much as he hated to admit it, the hollowing was draining more of him every day. He wondered how much longer he had left.

"There!"

Selphie's exclamation disrupted his thoughts. At her insistent beckoning, he dragged himself over to the kitchenette and peered at her creation.

The egg was wearing a crown of chocobo feathers and perhaps half of their combined wardrobe; its bald crest peeped apologetically between countless scarves and t-shirts, while three lamps poised watchfully over the whole mess, buzzing with electricity.

"That's my shirt," Seifer said flatly. "Three of my shirts. And are those all the lamps in the cabin? How will we -"

"When you're in the house you're on mama duty!" Selphie told him sternly. "I won't have any arguments from you about it, either! You're gonna cuddle Mr Eggy until he hatches!"

"Absolutely fucking not."

Selphie fluffed up and jabbed his broken ribs, completely unfazed by their height difference as she squared up to his face. "Oh yes you are! You're warm and cuddly so you're the best mama candidate!"

"I-I am not _cuddly_," Seifer spluttered. "I didn't want to take the stupid egg. You should've just left it. That's nature. Things get eaten, nests get abandoned, shit dies. Deal with it."

"No!" she yelled. "I'm not gonna leave it! I'm not a completely heartless butthole! And neither are you. So stop acting like you are."

"Stop acting like you know me," Seifer countered acidly.

"Do you even know what kind of karma would be waitin' for you if you did something like that? If you let a baby chocobo _die_? Crazy bad karma! You'd get reincarnated as Irvine's gym socks. The sticky kind he keeps under his bed, if you get what I'm saying."

"I think I'm livin' my bad karma already," Seifer said.

As he turned to walk away, he suddenly noticed Selphie cradling her right hand. He paused, torn between his instinct to not give a shit and the little critter of guilt gnawing on his gut. At length, he asked, "You hurt?"

She looked up, wide eyed, and dropped her hand none too surreptitiously to her side.

Sullen guilt settled over him. "Is your hand broken?"

"Uh. Um. No. Well. Just like, three fingers or whatever. S'okay though, the potion took the edge off. I've had worse, anyways."

He eyed her sceptically. "Did I do that?"

She focussed on a spot above the egg, oozing reluctance. "Mmm maaaybe. Happened when I got disarmed. Which. By the way. Well done. I haven't been disarmed since I was, like fifteen or something."

"Shut up. Go sit on the couch."

"Huh?"

"Sit."

Seifer retrieved a med kit from under the kitchen sink and perched opposite her on the couch. He pulled out a small splint and some bandages, then gestured for her hand. She held it out to him, and he yanked it closer. So small compared to his. Almost childlike. But her knuckles were bruised and swollen; the backs were crisscrossed with silver scars; her nails were chewed and dirty. And of course three of her fingers were bent wrong, twisted. He clamped down his growing guilt.

"You were gonna set them yourself?"

She nodded, a blank smile on her face. "While you were asleep."

"You should've just asked."

"I've set my fingers before."

"You want me to do it now? It'll be easier."

She hesitated, nodded, then stared at the fire. The blank smile remained but her other hand clenched against her knee.

Seifer snapped her fingers back in quick succession without preamble. She flinched each time but did not whimper. Garden kids didn't whimper. Pain, injury and disfigurement was part of the job, and you didn't complain about the job. That would lower your SeeD rank.

He began to apply the splint in silence. It was especially important to apply splints when using magical aids, Seifer knew, as the accelerated healing could lead to the bones setting crooked.

"I'm so glad you didn't go into that forest," Selphie said softly. Injecting a playful note into her tone, she added, "You know I'll just keep following you, anyway."

"I don't need followers and it's too late for supporters."

"Maybe. But I'm gonna do it anyway. Just 'cause I can. 'Cause I want to." She looked at him. "Would you come after me, if I went into the forest?"

He raised an eyebrow curiously. "Are you gonna?"

"…I don't know. Sometimes I…" Her breath hitched, but that blank smile didn't waver. "I think about it sometimes. Would you come after me?"

He thought about it for a second. He could feel her eyes on him, but he kept his attention on the bandaging. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Don't have anything better to do."

He secured the bandage then released her hand, and she studied his handiwork with a genuine smile. Her eyes were very dark in the firelight, like pine trees in the night.

Out of the blue she said, "I'm not going back to Garden."

He leaned back on the sofa, feeling tired. He watched the firelight trail amber fingers through her hair as she nervously fiddled with the splint. "Oh yeah?"

"You're not surprised?"

"S'pose not. That's why you came here, isn't it? To escape?"

"To think. I can think clearly here." She pondered on her words, frowning and smiling at the same time. "I can't do the killing anymore. Even though I'm good at it. I don't want to be good at it. And I can't pretend like it's normal, either. We were all conditioned to think that it's normal. To spend our days learning all the ways to kill a person, then distract ourselves with festivals and balls and clubs. It's… it's…" She paused, grasping for a word that clearly hurt her to find. "It's sick. That's what it is. SeeD might have a noble goal and it might have succeeded in doing something very, very good, but the way it was achieved is…" She shook her head. "I don't want to be a part of that anymore. I don't want to be a part of the distraction techniques, or to teach kids how to not care when you kill someone. I'm not…" She trailed off.

Seifer clasped his hands and tapped his thumbs together. He didn't care about the killing. Part of what had given him such potential as a SeeD had been his lack of conscience. He'd often wondered if he was a borderline psychopath but didn't care enough to get a proper diagnosis. Or maybe he had been diagnosed but it had been tucked away in the classified medical files Doctor Kadowaki kept in her office. But he could empathise with Selphie yearning for something greater than what had been gift wrapped for them all.

Had it ever truly been a choice? His drive to become a SeeD had been one of necessity and expectation. He didn't doubt that even if he'd kept failing the exams, Cid would have made him a SeeD anyway. Unfair, but there you had it.

But Seifer hadn't just wanted a life outside of SeeD; he'd wanted a life _better_ than SeeD. Selphie was the same as him, even if her motives were different.

"What will you do now?" he asked.

She blinked at him. "Uh, I dunno? Is pancake-chef a thing?"

"You're an idiot."

"You're right, that's too dull. I gotta make it unique. I could make chocobo shaped pancakes – no – pancakes FOR chocobo! No! Chocobo eating chocobo shaped pancakes made from chocobo!"

"Go to sleep, Tilmitt."

Apparently taking him literally, she wriggled around so her head was on the arm rest and her feet were propped across his thighs. She dragged the wool throw off the back of the sofa and tucked herself in, closing her eyes.

Seifer stared alternatively at her feet and face, feeling he should be a lot more disgruntled than he was.

"I meant to bed," he drawled.

She shrugged and said around a drowsy yawn, "Warmer here."

Admittedly, he was also half asleep, eyelids dragged down by bone aching weariness. He slouched further into the couch, absently rested a hand on Selphie's ankle, and let the flames usher him into a deep, dark sleep.

* * *

They both woke up the next morning at an hour so late they would have been disciplined back at Garden. Seifer made them coffee while she threw together a hurried brunch, and after showering, checking on the egg and wrapping up in thermals, they made the four-hour trek across Whelby and through the mountain pass to where they'd found the abandoned delivery. They had a sled with them this time, so they were able to gather what hadn't been scavenged by wild animals before returning to town.

Greta's eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw them both with the delivery in tow. "Hyne Divided, you got it back! What happened?"

"Dragons!" Selphie replied cheerily. "It's preeetty much all here. A few of the vials were smashed and animals ate some of the food, but a lot of the packaging was saved. Aaaaand –" She hefted a large parcel and dumped it with a crash onto the counter. "We managed to save all twenty issues of Girl Next Door Magazine!"

"That's my main source of income," Greta said, impressed. She eyed Seifer and pointed to the magazines. "You want a freebie for your hard work?"

Seifer bit down his amusement. "I'll pass."

"You don't want anything at all?" Greta eyed them suspiciously.

"Nope!" Selphie chirped. "We're just happy to help!"

Seifer pitched her a chagrined looked. He had not been happy to help and, if anything, the stupid escapade had worsened his condition and risked exposing their identities. And for what? So the miners could get their monthly wank bank instalment?

Greta hefted the magazines behind the counter. "Welp, if you need anything, be sure to holler. You've done me a fine service."

Seifer eyed her store then plucked a newspaper off a rack. It was two months old. "I'll take this," he told Greta, ignoring Selphie's warning look, and she waved a hand dismissively.

They left the store, grimacing against the cold, and Selphie hopped from foot to foot and blew into her gloved hands. "I hope Mr Eggy's okay," she said.

Seifer zipped his thermal as high as it would go against the unwelcome sting of cold air. "It's an egg. It's not going anywhere."

"What if it hatches when we're not there?"

"It might not even hatch. It might be dead."

She punched him. "Don't say that! I know it's alive. My Selphie-senses tell me so. And my Selphie-senses are always right."

Seifer absently tugged the tracking device on his wrist. "Let's go to Sorely's. I could use a drink."

"It's mid-afternoon."

"So? Better than being stuck in that cabin."

Selphie glanced at him as they began to walk towards the Sunspot. "You really hate staying in the cabin that much?"

He turned the question over in his mind. "I can't see it as anything but a tomb."

She looked aghast, then pensive. "I… never thought about it like that. I guess because I don't see you dying."

"It's not your reality to live with," he said simply.

"I mean, I know you're not going to die. I feel it." She tapped her temple. "My Selphie-senses."

He felt a prickle of annoyance. "You're deluded. All you do is create your own idea of the world to cushion your conscience. What do you think this is? A vacation? Maybe for you, but this is the end for me."

She stopped walking and grabbed his arm. Her grip was firm, belying of her appearance. "This isn't a joke to me, if that's what you're saying. I take it seriously. I take a lot of things seriously. I believe in my friends; Rinoa, Squall, Elle, Matron. We don't give up on each other. The Orphanage Gang doesn't give up on each other!" She released her grip. "Even if you give up on yourself, I still won't. I'll kick your butt as many times as I have to keep you around."

She glared up at him with an expression that was probably meant to be fierce, but just looked petulant on her pixie face. He wanted to shake her; he was full of rage and bitterness and rejection, and something else, a dull unfamiliar throbbing in the centre of his chest. He thought maybe he'd felt something similar before, in a time that seemed like an eternity ago, during that summer with –

Seifer caught himself before the thought could take seed. He banished it away, almost in a panic. He sidestepped Selphie's suddenly confused look – no doubt he'd betrayed something of his thoughts on his face – and stalked towards the Sun Spot.

He seriously needed a drink.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

* * *

It was barely past 3am when Rinoa woke Selphie. Or to be more specific, when a terrifying surge of raw magic materialised from nowhere.

Rinoa's power was strong enough to ruffle GFs and terrify lesser monsters, and although she'd learned to mask her magical resonance in the presence of those who might take offence to it, she didn't bother with her friends, which sent Selphie tumbling out of the top bunk and groping for her weapon as Rinoa hopped through a portal and wrangled her in a hug.

"Sefie I missed yooouuuu!"

Selphie fumbled in her arms while her brain struggled to push semi-comprehensible words through a haze of sleep. "Blugh… mmnn… samezies. Wha… Uh… Is it pancake time already?"

Frowning, Rinoa held her at arm's length and looked her up and down. "Huh?"

A disgruntled voice drifted from the dark recess of the bottom bunk. "It's three-fucking-AM, dipshit."

Rinoa blinked between Selphie and the cranky mound of blankets, then slapped her hands over her face. "Oh. My. Gosh. I am SO sorry! I totally forgot about the time difference! Aaah! I'm such a dummy! It's 9am in Balamb! I'm so sorry!"

Selphie rubbed sleep from her eyes and yawned. "Ah, um. It's fine. I was like, totally awake. Ah – ah!" Angelo had followed Rinoa through the portal and was licking Selphie's fingers. She bent down and tousled her ears.

"You've got an appointment with Odine today," Rinoa told Seifer apologetically. "We're already an hour late for it, by Estharian time." Apropos of nothing, she added, "I couldn't decide if it was appropriate to wear a summer dress for a political visit, but I don't want to wear black all the time either. The Deling Times said I looked menacing the other day."

"Rude," Selphie said.

"Right? I think it was the leather skirt, but they're all the rage downtown! Although, Insider magazine said Squall and I looked like a 'power couple' that day, so I guess that's a thing. Anyways, I thought I'd opt for cute today."

"You do look cute," Selphie said agreeably, eyeing her floral dress. "Give us half an hour, eh?"

Rinoa nodded, then prodded the disagreeable mound of blankets with her foot. "Wake up, sleepyhead!"

Said disagreeable mound of blankets swore and rolled over, but Selphie knew Seifer wouldn't dare ignore Rinoa. She wasn't a person one could easily ignore, sorceress powers notwithstanding.

Selphie shuffled into the kitchen with Rinoa and canine in tow, and flicked on the lights. Her splinted fingers still throbbed in pain, but the potion she'd taken yesterday evening had cured the blisters and bruises. Which was good, because it meant she didn't need to answer a barrage of concerned questions from Rinoa at 3am.

The kettle had only just started to boil when Rinoa suddenly shrieked. Startled, Selphie spun around and found Rinoa peeping between the swathes of shirts and scarves at the egg, her eyes liquid saucers of delight.

"Is this what I think it is!?"

Sleepiness banished, Selphie grinned and hopped beside her. "Yep! We found it outside. The mama had been eaten, so we adopted it."

"Ohmygosh you and Seifer are having a baby!"

Selphie's insides took an interesting dive south, then she tittered sheepishly and patted the egg on its speckled head. "Uh, well, I wouldn't put it that way."

"Neither would I," Seifer growled as he emerged from the bedroom, squinting against the light and dressed in a tee and joggers. He shoved past them both to finish brewing the coffee, absently rubbing his broken ribs. "I didn't want it in the first place."

Rinoa gasped. "Don't say that! It can hear you! Don't listen, baby choco, you are wanted and loved. Your mama and papa and Aunty Rinoa love you so much, you're going to be the bestest most precious baby bird in the whole wide world." She punctuated her tirade by squeezing the egg in a hug and Selphie wondered if her magic might turn it into a monster chocobo. With giant talons and fangs and fire-breathing abilities. A chocoster. Or Moncobo. She could ride it into battle! That would be totally sweet.

She shook off the daydream and said, "We'll have to take it with us in case it hatches. I keep turning it 'cause I don't want it to overheat in one area. Also, I'm worried about the lamps going out. The storms can cause blackouts this far up in the mountains."

Rinoa nodded seriously. "Good idea. We can make a baby sling out of the bedsheets!"

"Yeah! Seifer can wear it 'cause he's the warmest."

Seifer speared them with a sinister look above his thermos. "They'll never find your bodies."

Rinoa waved a hand at him. "Shush. No one will see anyway; we're going straight to the lab. It can be our secret. And I promise I won't tell Squall."

"You're literally messaging Squall as we speak!" Seifer said.

Rinoa lowered her vidphone with an impish grin. "I'm only sending him a photo of the egg! I'll have you know that Squall loves chocobo."

"Of _course_ he does."

"Be nice or we'll make the sling out of the flowery blanket," Rinoa said warningly, which shut Seifer up.

_I've really gotta get Rin to teach me that trick,_ Selphie thought. She looked between the pair with a grin. _I bet they made a weird couple, back in the day._

They were ready to go in half an hour with the egg strapped to a mortified Seifer, who'd opted to wear a baseball cap and high-collared jacket to salvage the dregs of his reputation. But despite his humiliation, Selphie could feel the heat of his magic increase and pinned him with a smile. He shot her a withering look in return but tolerated Rinoa fussing and preening over the egg until she finally decided it was time to leave.

"I've got three missed calls from Odine's secretary," she remarked jovially before tucking her phone into her cat-shaped purse. "How inconsiderate of me. Oh well! Let's get going."

"Why are you coming, anyway?" Seifer asked Selphie suddenly. "You could stay here and babysit the stupid egg."

Selphie opened her mouth, then closed it. Huh. Why was she coming? "Would you… rather I stay behind?"

Seifer looked just as lost for words as she was for a moment, as though whichever answer he gave would be the wrong one, until they both noticed Rinoa's curious eyes ping-ponging between them and hurriedly said, "Don't give a damn either way. Do what you want."

"I should report my observations on the hollowing anyway," Selphie said. "Besides, Baby Eggy is much better with you. He's so active when you're nearby."

Rinoa's eyes lit up. "Really!? You can feel it moving?"

Selphie and Rinoa both planted their hands on the egg's surface, but Seifer batted them away irritably. "I'm not a damn pregnant woman, get away from me. It moves because of the heat, that's all. Fuckin' women."

Rinoa teleported them to the entrance of Odine's Lab, and despite knowing she was coming, the guards fell about in alarm. They yelled and brandished their weapons and bowed and retreated simultaneously until one of Odine's assistants took charge and scolded them back into rank.

While they watched the chaos unfold, Selphie shrugged out of her light sweater, wilting in the Esthar sun, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Seifer remove his cap and run the back of his wrist across his forehead, mouth set in a grim line.

"Sorry we're late!" Rinoa chirped to the assistant. "I had very important sorceress stuff to do."

"Doctor Odine does not require your attendance today, Sorceress," the assistant said.

"I know," Rinoa said. "Unfortunately, he'll be denied the pleasure of my company as I have an appointment with the Minister of International Communications this morning." She turned to Selphie. "Are you staying then? If you come with me I promise there'll be ice cream!"

"…With the Minister of International Communications?"

"Laguna will be there. So. Yes. Definitely ice cream."

Selphie looked at Seifer out of the corner of her eye, but he was staring at no particular point across the desert, probably not listening or caring. "I better stay here. I have stuff to report too."

Rinoa looked puzzled, then shrugged. "Suit yourself." She punched Seifer on the shoulder then patted the egg. "Be good, both of you. I'll drop by later. Good luck!"

Then with a fizzle of magic that made Selphie's ears pop, she vanished, and one nearby soldier crossed himself and muttered a prayer.

"Let's get this over with," Seifer said, glaring at the soldier.

Selphie wiped sweat from her temple and thoroughly concurred.

"Follow me," said the assistant. "The other subject is waiting inside."

"Subject?" Seifer echoed.

The assistant didn't elaborate, but the 'subject' in question became obvious as they entered the lab and spotted Matron locked in conversation with Doctor Odine over a hololog of data. She was a picture of elegance dressed in a button-up silk blouse and long dark skirt, with her hair swept into a braided knot at the base of her neck. A few strands came loose of the braid and whispered around her concerned face as she looked up and smiled at them.

Selphie could almost feel the jolt that went through Seifer; his whole body went stiff as he planted his feet firmly on the floor, ignoring the guards attempting to usher him further inside.

Selphie's attention bounced between the pair of them, torn between her understanding of Seifer's reluctance and how Matron's smile dissolved like sugar in hot water. At length, Selphie placed a supportive hand on Seifer's arm, then trotted forward to greet Matron.

"They said you were a test subject!" Selphie said, a bit crossly. "I can't imagine Squall agreed to this."

Matron tore her eyes from Seifer. "Oh, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I'd say I'm more of a volunteer, really." On impulse, she reached out to brush Selphie's hair out of her eyes. The gesture made Selphie's heart seize up in her chest and without thinking she stepped out of her reach. They shared an awkward look, unspoken emotions tangling between them, and Seifer finally came to stand beside Selphie with a smug look on his face.

"We don't want you here, Matron."

Matron snapped her hand back, hurt slapped across her face. Selphie elbowed him, chagrined about being spoken for, but Doctor Odine relieved the tension by misunderstanding the situation completely.

"Stupid boy, do you want to stay like zis? Edea iz the only sorceress on record to lose her powers and not die. She may be ze key to unlocking ze secrets behind passing powers from one source to another. I will not hear any silly disputes! What is zat attached to you?"

"Not important," Seifer said as he unwrapped the sling and handed the egg to Selphie. "Let's get this over with."

They led Seifer into a separate room where Selphie and countless assistants observed him from behind a glass wall. They strapped him to a chair and hooked him up to various machines that projected holodata at a quickfire rate on nearby holoscreens, while he crossed one ankle over his knee and answered an assistant's questions.

Curiously, Odine seemed more interested in Selphie and oversaw her interview personally, while Matron sat close by, listening.

Eventually the questioning became a tad uncomfortable.

"So you managed to halt ze hollowing process twice?" Odine prompted, while assistants tapped notes into their datalogs.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Oh, um. Force, the first time."

"Elaborate."

"I just… kept punching him until he woke up."

"'Woke up'? You mean until he was cognisant again?"

"Yes."

"And ze second time?"

"Wh-what?"

"How did you 'wake' him ze second time?"

Selphie hummed and looked at the ceiling. "Oh ah… y'know. Just. Force. Well. Sorta. Not as forceful. Forcelessly. Unforcenessly."

Odine glowered behind his spectacles. "SeeD Tilmitt, it is of ze utmost import zat you do not scrimp ze details. What may seem trivial to you might be ze key to unlocking ze mystery of hollowing."

Selphie felt Matron's eyes on her and all but withered into her seat, feeling her cheeks turn pink. "I kissed him."

Odine raised his eyebrows. "I see. An emotional trigger in place of physical assault. And it worked?"

"Yes."

"Would you say you and Seifer Almasy have a romantic relationship?"

Selphie willed the ground to swallow her. "I don't see how that's relevant."

"You do not get to decide what is and is not relevant here, Miss Tilmitt," Odine snapped. "Ze reaction and growth of both raw and para-magic is theorised to be linked with ze physical, mental and emotional states of its user. Because ze hollowfication is a product of raw-magic it is very much relevant if we discovered zat strong emotions might contribute to its development. Do you understand?"

"Yes…"

"Answer my question."

Selphie paused. "We're not… dating. Or anything else…"

Odine looked frustrated by this. "Does he care for you?"

"Yes? I don't know. Maybe. We're… old friends. I guess. Childhood friends, so…" She shrugged. She was being made uncomfortably aware of several unusual emotions and ignored questions in her mind, all of them involving Seifer.

"Why did you kiss him, zen?"

Like that one, for example.

Selphie rolled her shoulders. "Because he wasn't responding to being repeatedly smacked in the face and I really thought… I really thought I was gonna lose him this time. He was totally gone, y'know? I thought maybe I could shock him out of it." She shrugged. "I know it was a risk, but I felt – no, I sensed – he was still in there somewhere. I needed to play an unexpected hand if I wanted to lure him out again."

"Do you think he had an innate emotional response to the contact?"

"I dunno. Yes? Otherwise he wouldn't have snapped out of his hollow form, right?"

"So you were relying entirely on ze hope zat it would stir an emotion strong enough to combat ze hollowification?"

"Well, yeah, but also memory. We, ah, we both have a memory of kissing back when we were six or so. I hoped that reliving the memory might, y'know, have an effect."

Odine scowled and scrolled back through the notes on his datalog. "SeeD Tilmitt, our files show you have an unusual talent for channelling raw-magic without ze aid of a GF, is zat correct? Yet you're not a sorceress. Garden records show your magical abilities while under extreme duress are unparalleled and unique. Could you tell me more about zat?"

"It's not uncommon for Garden kids to have special abilities…"

Odine gave a tight smile. "'Garden kids'. Yes. Those who are exposed to dangerously high levels of raw-magic: ze GFs. And para-magic, to some extent. It begins to effect ze genetic makeup, after a while."

Selphie's eyes darted to Matron. "They didn't tell us about that."

"How did you get your powers?"

Selphie sighed testily. "Isn't this supposed to be about Seifer? I'm not a test subject."

"Your unusual connection with raw-magics might be what's grounding Seifer's consciousness. I predicted he would be much further along in ze hollowification process by now and be devoid of complex emotion. Yet here he is. So. Will you corporate?"

Devoid of emotion…? Selphie's insides became slushy. She glanced sideways through the glass at Seifer, her heart racing. We could… really lose him. "Yes."

"How are you able to tap into ze raw-magic of this world? How did you come to wield 'The End'?"

Selphie bit her lip and pulled from her mind a memory she'd hoped not the revisit.

"I was thirteen. At Trabia Garden on an assignment. I was fighting monsters with my squad – just common gaylas, not even high level – and I found something inside of one of them. A GF. I was meant to hand it over to Trabia so it could be transferred to Balamb – I wasn't even cleared for junctioning at that point – but when I drew it out of the monster, the GF just… just planted itself into my brain. I was…" She searched for the word. "Violated. I guess. Maybe I let it in but… I don't know. It seemed desperate and before I knew what was happening it had latched inside of me and wouldn't move. I couldn't unjunction it. I was so scared."

"Without a host it would have likely dissipated into ze lifestream," Odine said. "It probably latched onto ze nearest lifeform to prevent zat from happening."

"Well, that's the thing. Although I didn't know it at the time, I realise now it felt totally different to a normal junctioning. I only had it for a few hours, you see." Selphie hesitated, pained by the memory. A memory that, for some unknown reason, the GFs would not touch, no matter how much she willed them to take it from her. "It was… It was dying. Dying inside my head. It was so awful. It felt like I was dying. Or a part of me was dying. I tried to talk to it. Tried to comfort it, I think. It was so weak and tired that I couldn't even get its name, couldn't picture its face. I think I could hear its laboured breaths in the back of my mind, like a deep rumbling. The steady beat of its heart as it slowed. And then, it just… went quiet."

"It died while you had it junctioned?"

"Yes. Hyne, I thought I'd died. And when it died, it left all its magic in me and its attack, The End. The knowledge is deep inside my mind so I can't explain it or teach it, even if I wanted to." Selphie blinked pensively. "I think it had been a very powerful GF, once."

The assistants taped furiously onto their datalogs, whispering avidly between themselves.

"GFs have died before," she said, confused by their excitement. "We lost two in our battle with Ultimecia."

"Zat was different," Odine said. "Sorceresses made ze GFs, and such is their power zat they can unmake zem with a thought; just as they can mould and forge zem to fit their ideals, so can they will zem out of existence. What makes your experience so unusual is zat it seems to be ze natural death of a creature not meant for natural death."

"I don't understand."

Doctor Odine began to pace back and forth, talking more to himself than to Selphie. "Ze GFs seem to mirror ze sorceress that created zem. Perhaps we were wrong about ze nature of their magic. Perhaps they do not return to ze lifestream, but instead must pass on their power before their corporal body can find rest, much like ze sorceresses, unless they are directly willed away by a sorceress."

Selphie leaned forward. "Does that mean I'm a GF now?"

"No! Stupid girl! You are a human. But you are… certainly something new. Neither GF nor sorceress. A keeper of raw magic. You have found a way to junction raw magic without a junctioning aid, and without the ability to unjunction it. It has become as much a part of you as Ultimecia's magic has become a part of her knight." Odine's eyes were popping with excitement. He flitted around Selphie, clearly resisting the urge to prod her. "This is… this is fascinating. Fascinating! Ack! Ze great Doctor Odine has made yet another ground-breaking discovery!"

"Excuse me, I'm not your discovery," Selphie said grumpily. "It was purely accidental. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't –"

"There must be a link, a similarity somewhere," Doctor Odine rambled, ignoring Selphie completely. "The hollowification and ze ability to inherit a GFs magic… where is ze connection? How could we harness this newfound power? What if we could replicate ze transferral process into some sort of weapon –"

"Pardon me, Doctor Odine," Matron cut in, "but I believe Sorceress Rinoa requested these interviews must centre around finding a cure for Seifer's affliction. I believe she was very specific regarding not wanting it to be used for… unsavoury purposes."

Doctor Odine mopped sweat from his brow. "Oh. Yes. Ze sorceress." He huffed. "SeeD Tilmitt, will you agree to undergo further tests in aid of finding a cure?"

"If it means helping Seifer, then sure. I'm not looking to cure myself though, or unjunction whatever the GF left inside of me."

Odine nodded. "Quite, quite. There is much to think about. My assistants will conduct some preliminary tests. Follow zem into the lab." He passed her a shrewd look. "It would be in ze best interests of the boy if you are compliant."

Selphie hopped out her seat and rolled her eyes. "You don't need to emotionally blackmail me, ya know. I'm here by choice. I'll do whatever it takes to help my friends!"

Odine looked pleased. "Good. Now go. Mrs Kramer, please remain here for further questioning."

For the rest of the day Selphie underwent a series of tests and examinations that ranged from boring to deadly. They repeatedly forced her into a Limit Break state while assistants recorded her magical aura until blood trickled from her nose and stars blasted across her vision. She was subject to tests of strength and stamina with and without the aid of a GF, leaving her dizzy and the GFs irritable from being rapidly junctioned and unjunctioned.

Odine was only interested in unearthing The End (which remained evasive), though he seemed particularly keen on the Drawing exercises. He repeatedly attempted to Draw the innate magic out of her mind, but it did not work, or at least, Selphie didn't have the stamina for it. She lost consciousness on the sixteenth attempt.

When she woke, she found her head in Matron's lap while she stroked Selphie's hair and spoke very sternly to the assistants.

"- that it must be done, but she's still a girl and you're pushing her too far. Please, let her rest a moment."

Odine's voice drifted through the darkness. "Mrs Kramar, you are interfering with tests zat are invaluable to discovering –"

"I said that will be enough for today." Matrons' voice was firm and static and made Selphie's heart pulse with bittersweet love.

"I'm fine," she said croakily, pushing herself into a sitting position. "Just gimmie half an hour and the biggest chocolate bar you can find. I can carry on."

Odine pursed his lips crossly, then nodded. "Fine. Half an hour. Somebody get ze girl some sugar."

"Make sure Seifer eats too!" Selphie called after him.

Matron cocked her head curiously, then gestured for her to sit beside her on some nearby chairs. The assistants disappeared, leaving them alone, and Selphie fiddled with her braids, waiting for Matron to speak first.

"There's… so much to say," Matron said, eventually. She sounded as tired as Selphie felt and her face was cut into a web of worry lines. "To all of you, I suppose. I owe you… so much."

"We owe you too, Matron," Selphie said, somewhat graciously. "We do love you, y'know. It's just… all a bit… weird."

"I know, dear. I loved all of you so much. I still do, of course." She hesitated, smoothing down the front of her skirt. "I was… I am barren. I think maybe the sorceress magic made me infertile when I first became a sorceress, when I was very young. Cid and I always wanted children so after the war the Orphanage made sense. We wanted children, we wanted to help, but also I wanted to hide." She gave a wry smile. "People didn't like sorceresses very much after Adel." Her smile faded. "We loved all of you, but there was one little boy I couldn't let go of. One I couldn't bring myself to adopt away…"

"Seifer?"

Matron's worry lines grew deeper. "We were in the process of officially adopting him, but then Ultimecia came along…"

Selphie's eyes grew wide. "Did you ever tell Seifer this?"

"No. It would only cause him more pain and I've already caused him so much." She touched her cheek. "It's my fault he wanted to become a knight. I used to call him my little knight when he was small. My golden, shining boy. He became fixated on the idea and I'm ashamed to admit I did not discourage him. I even used to joke with Cid that someday he'd grow up be my second knight." Her breath hitched in her throat and she looked away. "Ultimecia was very bitter and cruel. She restored Seifer's memories of me, made him remember his promise to protect me, his reason for becoming so obsessed with being a knight in the first place."

Selphie clacked her heels together. "There's no sense of family in SeeD. Comradery, sure, but that's different to having a family, I think. Seifer always put himself above everyone so he didn't share that sense of comradery. Not even with Raijin or Fujin, not properly."

"No," Matron agreed. "That was my fault too, I suppose. He probably thought he had to be the best, the strongest, if he wanted to be a knight. He never shook that off, even when he'd forgotten about me. Cid always pushed him, maybe even spoiled him a bit, but I think Cid felt it was too painful to connect with Seifer beyond that. Seifer reminded him of the family we could've had, if things had been different."

It occurred to Selphie that Matron seemed very frail now, no longer the frightful power she had been under Ultimecia's influence.

"I should never have put those ideas into his head," she went on. "It was selfish of me…"

"You weren't to know what would happen," Selphie said.

"Ultimecia tainted him because she couldn't tolerate or understand my love. She needed him to some extent, of course. She used him to exact her plans in this time. But that is, to some extent, forgivable. What isn't forgivable is how she toyed with his emotions and vulnerabilities, made him feel wanted again, made him feel like a son, then brushed him aside just as suddenly. She twisted her terrible magic through him, distilling him with equal amounts of confusion and confidence, and distorted his memories to suit her purpose. And now she's gone he probably feels emptier than ever." Matron's voice shuddered. "It pains me that the world has branded him a monster, yet it is Ultimecia and I who are the wicked ones. He is a victim just as much as everyone else."

Selphie sighed. "I mean, he's a real jerk sometimes. And he totally has to answer for some really lame-o stuff he did during the war. Like launching the missiles that destroyed my home! But… I know deep down he isn't a bad person. Rinoa knows it too. And Squall knows it… Heck, everyone knows it – even Zell! He's just such a stubborn pain in the butt and wants to do everything by himself."

"Is that why you're helping him? Because you think he deserves retribution?"

Selphie bit her lip. "I want to believe people can change. I want to believe that for every bad thing a person puts into the world, they can counter it with something good. They can get a second chance…" She looked at Matron. "We deserve that, right? Even us SeeD?"

Matron placed a hand over Selphie's and she didn't pull away. "You're already a very good person, Selphie. My little sunshine bubble."

Selphie giggled self-consciously.

"You and Seifer were terrible together as children, you know," she said wryly. "Such a handful. I would've kept you apart if you didn't love each other so much. Do you know he cried for nearly a week after you left the Orphanage? Goodness, but he was a devil after that." She tucked her hair behind her ear. "I never thought that love would have blossomed into your adult lives."

Selphie threw her a wide-eyed look, heart stuttering, then puffed out her cheeks and kept quiet.

"I felt so disheartened by Seifer's condition," Matron said, "but your dedication has renewed my hope for a cure. Your positivity is contagious; even Seifer seems to be fighting again. Now I'm sure we'll sort this out."

Selphie nodded resolutely. "You can count on us! This is a piece of cake compared to saving the world!"

Matron turned sombre. "I am sorry for placing such a terrible responsibility on you all. There's no way I can make it up to you or even accept your forgiveness. I was probably never cut out to be a mother anyway…" She sighed. "Although it may be empty and even inappropriate for me to say, I want you to know that I'm so very proud of you. All of you. You will always be my children."

Selphie looked away. "I'm sure Seifer will forgive you someday, too."

Matron patted Selphie's hand. "I hope so."


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

* * *

Odine finally released Seifer from the lab at five minutes to midnight. The tests had been intensive, and he was exhausted. They hadn't fed him since midday and even then, it had been sparing; just a few items from the vending machine as an afterthought. They escorted him to the lobby where Rinoa and Selphie stood waiting, and he was pleased to find that Matron – no, _Edea_ – was no longer there.

His relief died when he saw Selphie. She was struggling to stand straight, her eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and her face was a pasty canvas of burst blood vessels and bruises around the ever-present smile.

"What the fuck happened to you?" he barked.

"Been a long day," she replied simply.

Rinoa put her hands on her hips. She looked mad. No, she _felt_ mad. The air hummed with magic. Up above the lights flickered and Odine mopped sweat from his brow.

"This was not part of the agreement," she said to Odine. "Selphie is under SeeD contract and you did not have permission from Garden to include her in the testing. This is an extreme breach of trust and I won't – "

Selphie placed a hand on her arm. "Rinny. It's fine. I volunteered. It might be against SeeD protocol but technically I'm under no contract save yours, and I'm on vacation. This is to help the bigger cause."

Rinoa looked more concerned than annoyed now, and probably only dropped the matter because Selphie looked about to collapse.

But Seifer didn't want to drop the matter. He was inexplicably furious, boiling with rage, but unsure at whom to direct it. Selphie? Odine? Himself?

"Why are you doing this?" he spat at Selphie. "This doesn't involve you! I'm the one with the hollowing so I'm the one they need to test."

Selphie smiled wanly. "It's complicated, but basically they think I might be delaying your condition, so I volunteered to help understand how and why."

Seifer scoffed. "What the fuck did they do? Kick the shit out of you? Drop you into a pit of Ruby's?" Fuelled by ire, he grabbed Odine by the front of his coat and heaved him off the ground. Five soldiers levelled their rifles at him, but he paid them no mind as he shook Odine and snarled in his face. "What did you do to her, you son of a bitch! Answer me!"

"Step away from the Doctor," one of the soldiers barked.

Seifer spun to face them, dragging Odine with him. "You want to take me on? You think you can? I will end you and _use this pathetic clown as a meat shield!"_

"Enough!" Rinoa waved a hand, and the room went quiet.

Seifer's grip inexplicably slackened and Odine dropped to the floor. The soldiers lowered their weapons and walked calmly out the room, their footsteps in perfect, measured unison. Unruffled, Odine regained his footing and stared at Rinoa. Waiting.

Rinoa's magic sank into Seifer's mind, running like poison through his veins. He pressed his hands to his eyes, mentally willing a sudden darkness to recede.

Selphie shook Rinoa's shoulder. "Rinny, stop! You can't use magic around Seifer; you're making it worse!"

Rinoa threw Seifer a startled look, and the magic vanished from his mind. "I… I'm sorry. I didn't mean… I don't mean to do these things sometimes – but I - I can't –"

Selphie's hand dropped to her side. "It's okay, Rin. We know. It's just been a long day." She turned to Seifer, looking even more exhausted, if that was possible. "Let's go home, okay? I wanna go home."

Home. Is that… what the cabin was to her? Home? The thought was troubling. He couldn't pinpoint why. Honestly, he was too tired to pinpoint anything. Instead, he adjusted the egg under the crook of his arm and nodded in silent agreement.

"I'll take you," Rinoa said, avoiding eye contact and visibly upset. "I'll report to Odine in the morning to see if they found anything." She waved a hand and opened a portal through which they glimpsed wooden walls and a window framed with snow. "I'll be in touch tomorrow," she added. "Both of you should get some sleep."

Selphie pecked her on the cheek companionably before practically tumbling through the portal. Seifer followed her and the portal zipped closed behind him, then he placed the egg in its nest and switched on the lamps, and they stood in silence for a short while.

As he expected, the reserve Selphie was burning for Rinoa's sake extinguished and she tumbled sideways. He caught her, ready, and was surprised she was still conscious. She batted at him weakly.

"I'm fine, I'm fine."

"You're not," he said shortly. "I've never seen this kind of magic exhaustion before. What the hells did they do to you, Tilmitt? I swear I'll fucking kill that snivelling imp of a doctor…"

Selphie leaned heavily on him as he wordlessly guided her to the bedroom. "They were trying to Draw the magic outta me. 'Cept I think they Drew the life outta me instead."

"The magic in you?"

"Mm-hm."

"What magic? You mean Para-Magic?"

She yawned and sank further into his arms, stalling their way to the bedroom. He cradled her clumsily while coaxing her forward, but getting little response, he scooped her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom instead.

He ducked his head and lowered her onto the bottom bunk, but as he went to pull away, she snaked her arms around his neck and tugged him back down. Hyne only knew where she found the strength, but it was enough that he lost his balance, almost hitting his head on the upper bunk, and had to awkwardly support his weight on his elbows to avoid crushing her.

"Don't go," she purred as her hands snaked up the back of his neck, teasing his hair. Her legs shifted silkily underneath him, and one foot eased up his calf.

A traitorous shiver worked down his spine and for a fleeting moment, he almost didn't move. "You're tired," he told her (and himself), "and delirious, and probably sick from the tests. Go to sleep before you do something you'll regret later."

Her voice became a kitten's mewl in his ear and her breath feathered across his throat. "No, stay, stay! Please? I'll be a good girl, I promise, just stay here. Mmmn, Seifer, come here… _Seifer_…"

She had an iron grip but with some effort (more mental than physical) he unwound her arms and eased himself away. He roughly threw a blanket over her if only to avoid seeing her squirm, and she hummed his name right until she dropped suddenly to sleep.

He stood there for a moment with a hand over his face, cursing his traitorous arousal, and then stalked off to have a cold shower.

* * *

Three days later, they'd almost fully recovered from the damage wrought by Odine's tests. Selphie had been far worse than he, having been submitted to nothing short of torture under the disguise of scientific pursuit, but now the colour was back in her cheeks and her smile was less of a means to mask the pain.

Unfortunately, there was little to show for their suffering. According to Rinoa, Odine needed more time and tests to process the collected data into something resembling news. They'd accepted this grimly and didn't speak of the upcoming tests next week.

Selphie didn't mention her uncharacteristic behaviour a few nights ago, though he doubted she remembered because she would've either joked about it or apologised by now. Although, something about her demeanour and changed since the tests. Maybe it was his imagination, but she was… _gentler_, somehow.

Seifer did not abide any kind of gentleness on his behalf. He was used to being in the know, one step ahead, in control. Selphie so often left him off balance with her blasé forgiveness and infallibility that it left him downright irritated. And to top it off, he was pretty sure she enjoyed irritating him.

Yet, begrudgingly, he found himself being gentler with her too. He was still mad, of course; he didn't deserve her help or forgiveness, and what difference could she make, anyway? He was doomed and she was wasting her time. But on the other hand, she'd tolerated his attacks, two dragons and a cult of evil scientists in hopes of finding a cure for his hollowfication, all without complaint – as well she should, it would be shameful otherwise – but he found he couldn't be as brusque with her as he usually was.

_She's making you soft_, a tiny voice mocked in the back of his mind. And a louder, crasser voice countered, _Quite the opposite, actually._

He swept those irritating thoughts aside at the exact moment he caught himself staring at her legs, exposed under the hem of an oversized jumper. He huffed, frustrated with himself, and returned his attention to the crossword at the back of the newspaper Greta had given him.

"Is it hard?"

The pen almost slipped between his fingers as he grimaced at her poor wording. "No, just bored with crosswords."

"It's 'Butter', by the way."

"What is? Nine across?"

Selphie blinked over his shoulder at the crossword. "Oooh. You're doing the adult one? I was doing the kid one. Six down was Butter, as in Butter the Bunny. The kid's book. You know?"

"No. No, I don't. I'm doing the adult crossword. Like an adult."

She pulled a face and twirled around. "Borrrrring. Adult stuff is boring."

He smirked behind his hand. "Not all adult stuff is boring."

This earned him a curious look behind a practised smile, but he spared her a fumbling response, annoyed again by his wandering thoughts (he really was bored, though), and headed out the front of the cabin to chop wood.

The day was typically freezing, though there were no heavy clouds threatening snowfall. Just a crisp clear sky to compliment the fresh pines. He hefted the axe over his shoulder and placed a trunk on the block, then swung down, splitting the log in two. He kicked them aside and picked up another.

Woosh-_thuck_

He picked up another.

Whoosh_-thuck_

He wasn't sure what had turned his thoughts carnal. The utter boredom of the cabin? His inability to vent his frustrations through training? Or was it Tilmitt herself? The other night opened a floodgate of emotion he'd thought carefully disciplined; her moaning his name now played on repeat inside his head like a broken record. She'd whispered half a delicious secret to him then dangled the ending out of grasp, where his imagination merrily filled in the gaps during frequent moments of boredom.

He'd considered paying a visit to the brothel in Whelby but couldn't bring himself to do it. While he couldn't risk exposing his presence here – whores were terrible gossips – his reluctance involved feelings he simply didn't have the time or patience for – what would be the point now anyway? – yet could shake no more than he could his boredom.

Sweeping the complications aside, he told himself it was because he was bored and young and Tilmitt was the only girl available in a ten-mile radius. There's no way he'd have considered her otherwise. Even if she was actually quite attractive when she didn't have her hair done up like a three-year-old's and wore something other than frumpy sweaters and dungarees. In the mornings she wore these sweat-shorts that skimmed the top of her thighs, showing off her long, lean legs that tickled the memory of her foot creeping up his calf –

_Get it together, Almasy._

He stood up straight, wiping sweat off his brow, then frowned at the pile of wood at his feet. He'd chopped way too much, enough for three days.

He tried to be angry about the lack of control, but realised he felt giddy with it. _Giddy_. It was dumb. He was dumb. She was dumb. He just needed to get laid, and then all his emotions would set themselves right again. Not that he was particularly ashamed, but he'd thought himself above such mundane frustrations. Or maybe he'd taken those Garden girls for granted.

Distant buzzing shattered the silence of the wilderness, and it took Seifer a moment to recognise the sound of a snowmobile. His frown deepened. Their cabin was at the end of a winding track forever covered with snow, so the likelihood of the person passing by was slim to none.

Seifer lodged the axe into the block and returned inside. He was in no mood for visitors.

He found Selphie sitting on the couch with the egg on her lap, staring at nothing. Her expression was unsmiling. Blank. It made him uneasy.

"Hey, airhead. I think you have visitor."

She blinked, noticing him for the first time. "Huh? Wha-?"

Seifer cocked his thumb at the door. "Snow mobile incoming. I'm guessing it's your _boyfriend_."

She didn't look pleased by this, and that made him oddly satisfied.

"Eh, you're probably right. He hasn't checked in for a few days and Rinoa probably updated everyone on what happened at Odine's Lab. I was kinda hoping she wouldn't but…" She bobbed a shoulder and pasted a smile onto her face. "Be nice to have some company!"

He held a hand to his chest and said mockingly, "Is my esteemed company not good enough for her majesty?"

Selphie giggled and shooed him away from the door. "Go put some coffee on."

"I will. Just not for him."

"Don't be jealous," she chided as she headed for the bedroom.

This time he was genuinely taken aback. "I'm not! I'm not _jealous_. You're – you're fuckin' deluded."

She didn't respond as she shut the bedroom door, so he stomped to the kitchen and began boiling hot water, thoughts mutinous and grumpier than ever. She re-emerged just as the snow mobile stopped outside, dressed slightly more respectably in a pair of yellow overalls and a navy turtleneck.

"You look like a kindergarten teacher," Seifer said scathingly, feeling the need to speak and be heard.

Selphie tittered and mimed cracking a whip. "I'll leave the sexy schoolteacher vibe to Quisty."

"Shame," Seifer said before he could help himself.

Selphie spun around, surprised, but a knock at the door severed her response. She twirled back and yanked it open. "Irvy! You came to visit!"

She caught him in a bear hug that made Seifer bristle with dangerous emotions, but he clamped down on whatever stupid impulses were trying to usurp his cool. Tipping instant coffee and a thumb of whisky into his mug, he overheard their boring conversation.

"I'm glad to see you're safe. Rinoa looked… upset when she came back from the lab. Said you were involved in the testing now."

There was the sound of coats and boots being removed. Apparently, he was inviting himself to stay longer than Seifer cared for.

Selphie was saying, "C'mon, don't give me that look! I volunteered!"

"Now, I know you're tryin' to be helpful. I'm just sayin' maybe you haven't thought this through. This is Odine we're talkin' about. What if he… what if he puts a chip in your brain or somethin'?"

"I was kinda hoping he'd replace by left arm with a bazooka – pew BOOM! – wouldn't that be sick!? But I would totally be open to a chip depending on what it did. Like make me invisible. Or… oh! Oh! _Mind reading powers_!"

"Rinoa already has those."

"Oh yeah. Boooo. I guess a GF is kinda like a chip already, though? Anywho, Odine wants to learn more about my magic and how it might help other people in the future, so I'mma let him for funsies. Oh, and welcome to our home! I'll give you the grand tour!"

"Our home," Irvine repeatedly flatly. "Well, it does look more homely compared to last time. Less… burned and in ruins."

"Yeah," Selphie tittered agreeably. "Rinny did the interior design. Isn't she stellar?"

"She sure is. So, there's been no more… incidents?"

"Hm? Oh! Um. No. Not really."

"Not really?"

"Mmn."

"He bein' nice to you?"

Seifer turned to face the jumped-up prick who apparently thought he could just waltz in here and talk about him like he wasn't there. He cocked his head and sneered at Irvine, inviting retaliation. Irvine glowered back for a second, then thumbed his hat and turned an easy gaze to the fireplace.

"Welp, I'm glad you're still around, anyways," he told Seifer. "This hollowin' thing is important to Rinoa, so it's important to us, too."

This was apparently the right thing to say because Selphie fixed Irvine with a big, beaming smile that he caught and returned, but their shared look churned something rotten in Seifer.

"I'm sure the tests aren't the only reason you're checkin' on Tilmitt. You kept your memories of the orphanage, right?" Seifer sneered. "You never could stand us bein' together. That she liked bein' with me more than she did with you."

"Seifer!" Selphie snapped.

Irvine shrugged. "Don't be mad at him, Sefie. It's not like he's got much left anymore. Just meaningless memories and a few insults to nurse his bruised ego."

Selphie turned her annoyed look on him. "Our memories together aren't meaningless! Don't say that. It's not nice."

Irvine tipped his hat at her. "Pardon. But regardless of the welcoming committee I'm still gonna be checkin' on you. Please, Sefie, come outside, let's talk in private –"

"Which part of running off to a shack in the middle of nowhere and bein' told she wants to be left alone is difficult for you to understand, Kinneas?" Seifer grated.

Irvine closed his eyes, clearly trying to reel in his temper. Good. He deserved to feel angry. He was probably part of the reason Tilmitt had come here in the first place.

Selphie levelled Seifer with a look, then placed a hand on Irvine's arm. "If I promise to call once a week, will you stop worrying so much?"

"It won't stop me worrying, Sefie. You know that."

She looked away. "It's just… I really do need to be left alone for bit. Y'know. So I can think about things. Please understand; I would've come here with or without Seifer."

"I don't care what happens to him," Irvine said. "I just want you back."

Seifer was losing control of his cool, which only made him angrier. Seeing Selphie's expression soften, he couldn't help but sneer, "Well, you're going to be disappointed in that respect too, cowboy, 'cause she ain't comin' back."

Selphie shot Seifer a betrayed look and Irvine caught it. He rang his hat in his hands. "Sefie? What does he mean?"

She stared at him open mouthed for a moment, lost for words, then looked aside. "I… I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Are you… are you leavin' SeeD? Sefie, please, tell me. Don't make me hear it second-hand."

"I seriously don't wanna talk about it right now, okay?" Selphie pleaded. "I just need a bit more time. To think. You know?"

Irvine expression crumpled, then he pitched an angry look at Seifer. "Would you at least have the decency to give us five damn minutes? You weren't wanted back at the Orphanage and you're not wanted now."

Seifer stepped forward furiously, but Selphie stood between them and rested a pacifying hand on Seifer's arm. Irvine stared at their shared touch, and when something broke behind his eyes Seifer did not feel sorry.

Selphie said, "I said I don't want to talk about it right now. When I do, I promise I'll call. Until then… there's nothing else to discuss." Her expression softened. "I'm… I'm sorry, Irvy. I just –"

"Don't," Irvine said. "Just don't. I'll leave you two alone. That's clearly what you want."

He snatched up his coat, replaced his hat and barged back out the door, leaving it swinging open while he climbed on the snowmobile and shot away.

Seifer crossed his arms and smirked. "What a fuckin' drama queen. You'd think a –"

The slap was an unexpected sting across his right cheek. There wasn't a huge amount of force behind it, but he supposed it wasn't meant to hurt physically.

"You – you _asshole_!"

Selphie looked genuinely upset. Her eyes were blurred with tears and her lips were pressed into a thin, trembling line.

"You never said not to tell anyone," Seifer said petulantly. "But I'll give you that one."

"Oh, shut up! You knew – you knew darn well that I didn't want anyone to know. It wasn't your place to say anything! And then you just go and – and blurt it out… to Irvine, of all people! You knew _exactly_ what you were doing. You couldn't even spare me that one dignity you – you – you –" She shoved past him and out through the open front door, and stormed down the road.

As Seifer watched her go, a curious coil of unease tapped against his chest, but he pushed it aside and closed the front door behind her. He didn't want the cold air coming in.

* * *

Three hours passed filled with meaningless chores; turning the egg, finishing the crossword, half-finished cups of cold coffee. Distraction tactics while he told himself he didn't care. Because he didn't, dammit. He didn't care about her one bit.

He didn't.

And he was still repeating how much he didn't care while he pulled on his thermals and followed her footprints towards town in the deep snow outside.

Frustration. That was the problem, he realised. Frustrated about everything; Leonhart's promotion, Ultimecia, Matron, his lost chance with Rinoa, severing ties with Raijin and Fujin, his spoiled knighthood, the hollowing. Selphie. Everything. He had no direction, no goals, no dreams. Yet here he was, still fighting. Still trudging through the brutal cold and snow, refusing to give up for reasons he couldn't understand, beyond his own damn stubbornness.

Hyne, but he missed his gunblade. Just going through the basic stances would ease the irritation that accompanied his every waking moment nowadays.

Sighing, Seifer composed himself before entering the Sunspot.

It was busy inside. The miners' workday had finished, and now they lounged around the tables, eating, drinking and gambling, and choking the tavern with tobacco smoke and the smell of cooked meat. Seifer spotted Tilmitt engaged in a card game with a group of them, her poker face a bright grin, her banter easy and her insults playful. She didn't acknowledge him.

Seifer slunk somewhat dejectedly to the bar and wedged himself into a corner. Propping his feet on a stool in front of him and scowling at anyone who might ask for it, he stewed in his own thoughts until Sorely approached with a pint.

"'Ello, kiddo. Didn't think I'd see you again, much less with your limbs all intact. Couldn't bloody believe it when Greta told me you'd slayed two dragons. You're tougher than you look, I'll giva ya that." He placed the pint on the table in front of Seifer. "Drinks are on the men tonight. Word gets around fast in this place. You saved 'em a lot of worry, takin' care of them dragons. Greta said you did it for free and all."

Seifer eyed the beer coolly. When he looked up a few of the surrounding men lifted their own drinks in silent salute. He ignored them. "We didn't do it for free. We did it in exchange for a few turned heads if the wrong sort of people come sniffing around. And because my partner is batshit crazy."

Sorely guffawed. "She sure is. She dragged a damn mesmerise carcass in here earlier and cooked steak for everyone." He shook his head. "You sure bagged a wild one."

Seifer almost spluttered. "I didn't – It's not – We're not together."

Sorely raised a bushy brow. "Oh? S'not what she said earlier. Eh, none of my business. Drink up, kiddo. These tight motherfuckers won't treat you to a freehouse again."

"I'm not a damn kid," Seifer spat, then downed half the pint as Sorely returned to the bar.

The booze eased his tetchy demeanour and eventually he began to enjoy the bawdy songs of the miners and the flicker of the flames under the hearth. By the time he was on his second pint he'd started eyeing the women on the other side of the bar, and by his fourth he'd decided to ask their fees and was just finding his feet when someone blocked his view.

Selphie fixed him with a crooked grin. "What are ya lookin' at?" she asked in a tone that implied she knew exactly what he'd been looking at.

He leaned back and swallowed a sigh. "Nothin', apparently."

She kicked his feet off the stool and sat down. Wobbling, she waved at Sorely, who passed her a glass of something sparkling, and she stabbed the table twice with a straw before finally getting it in the drink.

Seifer couldn't help but smirk. "You're drunk."

"_You're_ drunk," she retorted.

Seifer considered the tilt of the room. "Yeah."

They sat in silence for a moment, then at length, Seifer said, "I'm sorry for earlier. What I said. It was… out of line."

She propped her chin on her palm and squinted at him. "I didn't think you cared enough to apologise."

"Cared enough about what? You?"

"Everything."

Seifer scoffed. "I'm not Squall."

"Aww, Squall is very caring, I'll have you know. He cares about, like, four whole things: Rinoa, his gunblade, his friends, and his triple triad card collection."

Always so fast to jump to Leonhart's defence. How did that loser manage to brainwash so many people into believing he was such a loveable fuck? Well, they didn't know shit about Leonhart.

Seifer drank the rest of his pint and signalled for another.

Selphie stabbed her straw at him. "Hey. Heeey. Is it true what they used to say about you around Garden?"

"They used to say a lot about me around Garden," he said wryly.

"About you and Quisty."

Seifer choked on a laugh. "And what did they say about me and dear Instructor Trepe?"

"That you used to… you know…" Selphie twirled her straw while she hunted for an appropriate word. "Bang."

"Damn, I thought you were gonna say something interesting. That's an old one."

"So it's not true?"

The interest had been there, once. Maybe. Seifer recalled his half-hearted flirting and her equally half-hearted rebuffs. Both of them on a pedestal of Garden's making, untouchable. Both of them seesawing between charm and contempt; mutual admiration and distaste that somehow always went hand in hand. Had there been something between them? They'd both been looking for validation and a type of connection that Garden actively discouraged. Maybe if things had been different and she wasn't so…

"She's not my type," he said simply.

"Oh? How so?"

"She's a total stick in the mud. Don't defend her. You damn well know it. She's a total sap, a flake, and a sticker to the rules. Not my type."

"Oh, c'mon. She chose a whip as her weapon! I bet she's a demon in the sheets."

Seifer snorted. "Why are you fantasising about Quistis?"

"Who _hasn't_ fantasised about Quistis?" Selphie countered fairly. "Although if Quistis isn't your type then I can see why you went for Rinny."

Seifer instantly sobered and glanced off to the side. "Don't bring that up."

Selphie sucked up half her drink, jade eyes fixed on him with an unreadable expression. He could already tell she wasn't going to drop it and felt irritation tousle his calm.

"Do you still like her like that?" she asked.

Seifer considered this. "No. That summer was… I was angry and frustrated with Garden. With Cid. I'd just failed my third SeeD exam. Cid had signed me out of Garden for the summer to encourage 'introspection'. I met Rinoa in Deling. She was angry too. At Caraway. At Galbadia. Both of us battling to escape the cages we'd been bred into… She was so different to everyone in Garden and I was different to all the stuck-up prep kids she hung around with, and she was full of fire and ambition like…" He trailed off, realising he'd opened up a bit more than he'd intended. He pushed away the pint.

"Bet it stings to see her with Squall," Selphie said.

Seifer reflexively clenched his jaw. "Not worth thinkin' about. I've come to terms with my mistakes. I still care about her, but not like that."

Selphie was still watching him with that smiling, unreadable expression. "Rinny still cares about you too, y'know."

"Rinoa cares about everyone," Seifer said shortly. "She's a pain in the ass. Like you."

Selphie leaned back, blowing a raspberry. "If I'm a pain in the ass then that makes you the King of All the Asses that ever lived."

He stood up. "I'll take that. Get me some of that steak to go, peasant. We're goin' home."

Selphie grinned at him, and he realised too late his slip of the tongue, but before he could attempt to backtrack, she skipped behind the bar towards the kitchens, and Sorely let her pass without protest. Damn, but the girl had a way of cajoling people.

As he stepped outside, he had to admit he was feeling a little fuzzy around the edges. Even the stinging slap of cold night air wasn't enough to sober him up completely, and when Tilmitt joined him he noted her step wasn't exactly steady either. She grinned brightly at him without any plausible reason, which he chose to ignore, though he did give her a once over. Right. She'd left the cabin in a tantrum.

He shrugged out of his thermal jacket and dropped it over her head. "You'll freeze, dimwit."

Selphie almost lost her balance as she tugged on his oversized jacket. "I'm wearin' a beer jacket, tee-hee!"

"You won't be laughin' when the frostbite sets in. Zip it all the way up."

Selphie stuck her tongue out but did as she was told. "What about you?"

Seifer raised a hand and let his latent magic set it ablaze. It came easily. No need to prod to life some temperamental GF who may or may not take a few memories just for the fire show. It was a curious feeling, though not necessarily a pleasant one.

Selphie made a show of patting out the flames. "Hey, hey! No magic, mister! I get the point, you're hot."

He winked at her and she rolled her eyes.

"Just escort me home like a gentleman," she slurred. "You owe me that much at least."

"I'm always a gentleman," he retorted. "I escort all my love interests straight into the arms of vengeful sorceresses."

She made an attempt to look cross but couldn't quite hide her grin. "Are you implying I'm a love interest?"

"I'm implying that I'll make you a human sacrifice if you don't shut up and start walkin'."

"But my toesies are numb," she said poutingly. "Carry me?"

"Not on your life."

"Piggy-back?"

"Dammit, Tilmitt, just walk already."

She skipped beside him and gave him a long look. "My name's Selphie. Sel-ph_iiiie_. Would it hurt ya to say it?"

"You've got a big mouth, Messenger Girl." He considered the treeline. It was ominously dark, but he could pick out hulking shadows just outside the light of the Whelby. The sky was utterly black and it was beginning to snow. Regretfully, he said, "I think we should find somewhere to stay for the night."

"Huh? Why?"

As if speaking to a child he said, "I have no weapon. You have no weapon. I haven't got a GF. You haven't got a GF. We're both drunk. You wanna risk walkin' back?"

Selphie blinked blearily at the darkness beyond. "Wow, Xu would knock me down a rank if she knew how unprepped I am right now. Okie-dokie! Let's go find somewhere to sleep! You wanna stay at the brothel?" She elbowed him. "I know ya dooooo."

He absently pushed Selphie out of his personal space. Seifer's vision was beginning to swim and his head felt stuffed with cotton. He hadn't been this drunk in a long time.

"No, there's gotta be an inn in this backwater dump. Let's go."


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

Selphie had to admit, she was maybe _slightly_ drunk. Not surprising considering she wasn't much of a drinker anymore, not since her cadet days when she partied in the Trabian outposts and smuggled vodka into the dorm rooms on Saturday nights, but it dulled the sting of the cold, at least.

She kind of wished she could collapse onto her bunk, though. But that was out of question, wasn't it? Seifer was right; they couldn't trek back to the cabin now.

"Let's hijack the chocobo!"

Selphie could feel Seifer rolling his eyes. "For the third time, no. That bird is probably the most valuable thing in this hick town. They will _not_ be happy to find it gone."

"We'll give it back!" Selphie pleaded, also for the third time, even though she had no intention of giving it back. It was absolutely going to be renamed Fluffy McButt the Ferocious and it was going to be her new bestie.

Seifer stopped in his tracks and blew into his cupped hands, features shadowed beneath the harsh light of a streetlamp. "Of course there's no fucking inn here. Why am I even surprised."

Selphie smacked her fist into her palm. "Brothel it is!"

"There's no brothel, either," he told her. "It's a legally rented room above Riley and Son's Workshop. We can't just ask to stay there. Why would we even _want_ to stay there?"

"It's weird that you know that."

He neatly sidestepped that line of questioning. "We'll have to go back to the Sun Spot."

"Woo-hoo! Lockdown!"

"No more drinking."

Selphie pulled a face and made a show of dragging her feet in the snow. "Boooo, you're gettin' all DC on me again. Booorrring."

They re-entered the Sun Spot and found it slightly more subdued. A group of miners gathered around a table in the corner were singing a low, rumbling song about dragons, while another group wrapped up a poker game and a few stragglers quietly nursed their drinks, pondering whatever it was miners pondered. Rocks, probably, Selphie presumed.

She galloped over to Sorely and leaned over the bar, chanting, "We need shots! Shots! Shots! Shots!"

Seifer grabbed the back of her coat before she toppled face first over the taps. "No. We don't. We need a room. You know anywhere?"

Sorely looked up from pouring a pint and ping-ponged an unamused look between the pair. "Can't you kids keep your pants on until you get home?"

"But that's so faaaaar," Selphie bemoaned. "We need a room _now_."

Seifer clamped a hand over her mouth. "We can't head back to the cabin unarmed. It's too dangerous. We just need a place to crash for the night. For free."

Selphie pushed his hand away. "We'll pay."

She fixed Sorely with her most winning smile while nearby patrons drunkenly pleaded her case and even offered their own beds, albeit with company, until Sorely was eventually cajoled into agreeing.

"This ain't an inn," he said shortly, "so don't expect nothin' fancy. I got a storage room you can stay in. 100 Gil upfront."

"100 Gil!?" Seifer repeated, aghast. "The fuckin' four star Balamb Hotel charges that much. I thought you said you weren't an inn –"

Selphie tugged a 200 Gil note from her bra and slammed it onto the bar. "And that includes pancakes in the morning!"

Sorely pocketed the note without batting an eyelid. "As if I could stop you, dragonbait. Just don't make a fuckin' mess and don't keep me up all night."

Seifer muttered something under his breath and Selphie sniggered. "We'll try. Upstairs?"

Sorely stepped aside for them. "Third door on the left."

A hail of lecherous cheers accompanied their walk behind the bar and up a flight of stairs, and while Selphie waved at the onlookers and winked – who cared what they thought anyways? –Seifer's face was a mask of annoyance.

"Don't you have any fuckin' shame?" he hissed, pushing her up the stairs. "I swear to Hyne you are the most insufferable woman I've ever met, and I've met some insufferable women in my time, including but not limited a sorceress hell-bent on warping time and space to end the known universe."

Selphie ignored him and kicked open the third door on the left. Sorely wasn't joking when he said he didn't take guests. There were empty wine crates stacked to the ceiling alongside cardboard boxes crammed with musty clothes, and a thick layer of dust coated every surface including a single bed shoved against the left wall. A garish floral sheet draped over the window was Sorely's answer to a curtain and there was no bulb in the overhead fixture, but there was a lamp in the corner with a red shade. She flicked it on, bathing the room in dusky light.

Seifer emptied a box of clothes onto a threadbare rug on the floor. "I'll sleep here."

"How chivalrous of you," Selphie said, not entirely sarcastic, as she perched on the edge of the bed and bounced up and down. A cloud of dust wafted around her and the mattress' springs shrieked like an old cat. "Yikes," she said. "No wonder Sorely was worried about us keeping him up all night."

Seifer tossed her a surly look. "Why did you tell people that?"

"What?"

"That we're dating."

Selphie shrugged. "Quells suspicion. Easier to overlook that than two military types shacked up in an abandoned Trabian outpost, eh? Also it stops the locals from hasslin' me too much."

Seifer seemed to consider this, then nodded.

Selphie slid off her boots. "I should've told you before, I guess. I, uh… hope you're not angry about it –"

"I'm not. Your _boyfriend_ might be though."

There he went again, spitting that word like it left a bad taste in his mouth. Weird.

She found herself offering an explanation apropos of nothing, and when she started the words came tumbling out helplessly, like rocks skittering down a mountainside.

"He's… he's not my boyfriend. Anymore. Obviously. Maybe never was, I dunno. Everyone just presumed we'd get together without even asking – he never actually asked me, you know? And the war really – it really messed us up, so I think we just wanted company or empathy or something. And – and the memories were so confusing and _he_ was always so confusing, flirting with everyone all the time – I couldn't really tell whether I loved him like _that_ or like a little brother and by the time I sorted it out it was too late and had gone too far and I really didn't want to hurt Irvy but it was so…" She trailed off.

Seifer paused his task of rearranging the clothes. "I couldn't give a dog's shit about your love life."

She jerked back, stung by his callous dismissal, then leaned forward and punched his arm. "You're a real jerky-jerkerson sometimes, you know that?"

"So I've heard."

She shook her head in disbelief, then hopped over to the electric heater by the window. She hit the 'ON' switch and was disheartened to find it unresponsive. "Poopy. The heater's busted."

"Great. Can you fix it?"

The room was beginning to spin, and the drunk haze turned her thoughts to sludge. "Mmmmmm noooooo."

"Some techy you are." Seifer glanced at her. "I swear if you vomit on me in the night, Tilmitt, I will make you regret it for the rest of your days."

"Tee-hee!"

He shook his head, then stripped down to the grey sweats and white t-shirt under his thermals.

Selphie watched him below her lashes. He was certainly looking less bulky than before, she noted, though the exercises he did every morning and evening helped upkeep his physique. He'd grown a beard over the last few weeks and his hair had become unkempt. Only the scars that crisscrossed his arms and back betrayed his fighter roots. Otherwise, he looked like –

"A Trabian lumberjack."

"What?"

"That's what you look like now. A Trabian lumberjack."

He shot her a flinty look. "Maybe I'll stay in the brothel, after all."

"Hehe, it's a good look. Lumberjacks are sexy."

"How many lumberjacks do you know?"

Selphie pretended to count the number off on her fingers and Seifer rolled his eyes. "Forget I asked."

Selphie drunkenly pulled off all her clothes bar her sweat shorts and tank shirt, flicked off the light, then wriggled under the sheets and thwacked her head on the pillow. She wrinkled her nose. "Mmmm, smells like sweaty balls."

Seifer snorted. "Go to sleep, Tilmitt."

Easier said than done. She was caught in a limbo between giddy, drunk and tired. Time became incorporeal as she watched the moonlight slide across walls that tilted and spun, and her brain buzzed with a thousand silly thoughts. She wanted to sleep, but also she wanted to find somewhere to dance and sing, and she wanted tequila and lime and pizza and a terrible movie, and also she wanted a bath, a nice waaaarm bath to stave off the cold that crept into her bones and made short work of Sorely's thin sheets. She kicked them off grumpily. Sorely could have at least found them a blanket –

She slipped out of bed and across the floor without giving it much thought, like watching someone else's actions through a fogged-up window. The old clothes beneath her palms smelled mustier than the sheets, and the floorboards were unforgiving even through the rug, but gods above it was warm – sooooo warm –

The source of the heat startled awake. "Uh – wha – I… Selph… Tilmitt, get back into bed."

Get back into the freezing bed? As if. She had a perfectly good hot water bottle right here, thank you very much.

She pressed herself against him, hooking one leg over his hips while her arm crept over his torso. He was – "So waaaaarm."

He made a half-hearted attempt to sit up, but she pushed him back down and shifted more of her weight on top of him. Her hand crept under his shirt and up his chest, seeking warm skin and – and what? Contact. Reassurance. No – yes? Her mind was foggy. A rational, scolding voice was smothered under layers of alcohol and… what?

Suddenly her heart was pounding, her breathing shallow. She inched further up him, breath feathering his collarbone and neck. His stubble tickled her lips.

There was a hand on her shoulder, pushing. A feeble attempt, at best, though he was tense under her like a coiled spring, breath hitched in his throat. "Tilmitt, _don't_. Don't do this. We'll both regret it. You know I'm not gonna be around for –"

She straddled him, severing that boring talk, and wriggled into his lap. He swallowed and gripped her hips, any protest instantly banished.

She wasn't stupid; she'd noticed his backhanded flirting, the way his eyes lingered on her when he thought she wasn't watching, the circumspect showers a few times a day. And she discovered that she liked the attention, even enticed him with cut off shorts and tousled hair, a cavalier brush of skin here and there. It was a new, delicious game, one she never thought she'd participate in – not with him, anyway. And now? The alcohol had sprayed fuel onto a simmering flame and it was raging out of control.

She shifted her weight again to feel the press of his growing arousal against the inside of her thigh, and listened in delight to his raspy growl. Her blood was singing in her ears, her skin tingling, every nerve ending on fire. Or maybe he was setting her on fire. Not hot enough though. Not yet.

"I'm cold," she said. "Warm me up?"

He accepted the challenge with the same fierce intensity he committed to everything that spiked his interest. In one smooth motion he sat up, grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanked her head back and kissed her hard enough to draw blood. His ferocity almost took the breath out of her and maybe it would have done if she, in that moment, hadn't realised just how pent up and miserable she'd been too. She countered him with equal parts fervour, moaning into his mouth, tearing off his clothes and then hers, hands seeking the core of his warmth that burned and burned like a sun.

He lifted her up then lowered her on top of him none too gently, then leaned back on his hands to watch her, striped in snow-stark moonlight tinged red from the floral curtain. One hand on his chest kept her balance as she easily found her rhythm, breath coming hard and sharp behind the unfurling pleasure and heat – so so much heat. Not normal. She thought she might catch on fire, might burn from the inside out, but it was too good to stop. She hadn't even begun to touch the surface and she wanted that fiery core more than anything –

He trailed one hand lazily over her chest, reached up to her throat, then with a few deft movements swapped their roles, pinning her to the floor. He hitched her legs up while his tongue trailed flames across her skin and his rough hands tracked fingertip bruises along her thighs, and he pried his name from her lips like a lyric she'd forgotten.

There was nothing gentle about him, but she didn't mind. All doubts and hesitation turned to cinder; there was only him and her and the rough boards under her back that scoured friction burns along her spine. She ran her nails down his back and hooked her legs around him as sweat rolled down her face, stinging her eyes and slicking her hair flat. The window fogged and the room became Ifrit's lair; she thought she might suffocate in the heat. Time blurred into a tangle of limbs, building into a climax that swept through her hot and fast and left her gasping. She pulled him into a deep kiss, then he pressed his forehead against her cheek and rumbled, "Sel… _Sel_."

She felt his end spread inside her and he went slack in her arms.

The room slowly returned to focus and time sharpened, and as she lay exhausted underneath him, a sudden pain cut through the pleasure. She gasped.

"It burns!"

He pulled out of her with a grunt and propped himself on his hands, casting her an unreadable look in the dark. "Oh yeah?"

Selphie wriggled uncomfortably. Was it burning? Or was it just very hot? She wondered if her womb was being cauterised, but after a few moments it began to cool, leaving a curious tingle in its wake.

"There… there's no way it's always been like that," she said, a little breathlessly.

Apparently satisfied she wasn't in pain, he rolled onto his back and entwined his hands behind his head. "Probably not."

He was a potent vessel of magic, she realised. It must have been entwined in his flesh, his blood, his very cells. "You shot me full of magic."

Seifer snorted in amusement, but his reply was severed by banging on the adjacent wall.

"I thought I told you kids to keep it down!" Sorely bellowed from another room.

Seifer and Selphie grinned, and she reached for him again.

* * *

It was the cold that woke her up the next morning, as well as a profound urge to puke her guts up. She groaned, throwing a hand over her eyes as the ceiling lurched sideways. It was too bright. Why was it so bright? The sun was mean. Tequila was mean.

Her eyelids peeled begrudgingly apart. She was alone in the little dusty room and quite suddenly blurry memories slotted into place. Her stomach pitched downward.

Seifer.

She sat up slowly, fighting off dizziness, then punched her fist into her palm repeatedly, saying, "This. Is. Why. You. Don't. _Drink_."

His absence left her ill at ease. His shoes were gone and most of his clothes, but, she realised, his thermal jacket was draped over her naked torso. He couldn't have gone far, then.

She climbed to her feet on wobbly legs, groaning like a seasick sailor. A headache clung to her temple with wicked little claws and her stomach protested every movement as she pulled on her clothes very, very slowly. The cold was suddenly a blessing, sharpening her sluggish mind while blasting her with goosebumps.

She was just beginning to lament the loss of her personal hot water bottle when the door was shoved aside and said water bottle returned. Their eyes met in a startled sort of way, and she was annoyed at herself for averting her gaze perhaps a bit too quickly.

Seifer had wrapped his face in a scarf up to his eyes – one of Sorely's that they'd slept on, she noted – so his voice was muffled when he said, "Here. Stole us some coffee. Also yelled at Sorely for giving us a room without a heater."

"I'm sure he gave two plebs about that," she remarked, gratefully taking the coffee. Testing the atmosphere, she slyly added, "Not that we needed one in the end."

He didn't look her in the eye as he tugged down the scarf to drink from his own mug. He looked sickly pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. Selphie was glad she wasn't the only one nursing a hangover.

He said, "Surprised you remember."

"I wasn't _that_ drunk!"

"Well, that's something, at least. I usually leave the drunk ones well alone but –"

"It was a long time comin'."

He blinked at her. "Me and you? Or the sex?"

"… Both?"

"Well, don't get used to it," he said shortly. "Put your thermals on. We should get back."

"Don't change the subject! And don't be boring. You know you enjoyed it."

"That's not the point, Tilmitt, and you –"

"Selphie," she corrected.

He gave her a look. "Don't complicate things."

"Things?"

"You don't want to get attached to me like that. I'm dying and it will only –"

"Sssh!" she pressed a hand over his mouth but he batted her away.

"Don't interrupt me, I hate being interrupted. And stop trying to censor the facts. You're just gonna cause yourself even more pain. No amount of shushing is going to change what's happening to me. Accept it, already."

She felt her face grow hot with annoyance and she squared up to him. "I won't. I will never accept it! And _you're_ the one avoiding the facts. You can tell yourself you just wanna have some fun before it all ends, but if that's what you really wanted you could've just slept with those other girls last night. But you didn't. Because you didn't want them, you wanted _me_."

"Pfft, don't be so full of yourself –"

"And I don't know what that means yet," she finished quietly. "Or if I want to know." She lifted a hand to her temple where the headache punctuated every word with a sledgehammer blow. "Look, I'm just really hungover and sore and hungry and thirsty and tired, so I'll let you off this one time. Plus we really need to get back to the egg. I hope we haven't fried him."

Seifer clenched his jaw, then downed his coffee. "Fine. But we're going to talk about this later."

* * *

It was a welcome relief when they made it to the cabin. They'd only been there a few weeks yet it already felt like more of a home than Garden had ever been. Garden, she reflected, had never really felt like home. It felt like a temporary post or a prolonged stay at a school or overtime at the office. Which. It kinda was all three. But it didn't feel… _homely_. She had a larger room than most as an Elite SeeD, but it was still clinical in appearance. It smelt like disinfectant at the worst of times and pressed linen at its best, cold from the constant aircon and not private enough to be exempted from random inspections from the faculty.

She looked sidelong at Seifer, who had just finished piling logs onto the fireplace and was trying to strike a match. "Hey. Did you feel like Garden was your home?"

He looked annoyed at the question, and stared at the match in his hand. "I don't know what a home is supposed to feel like."

"Somewhere that's yours. Somewhere safe. Somewhere personal."

"Not Garden, then."

"It's weird that we don't know what having a family or home feels like, but we just instinctively know it isn't Garden. Or maybe the Orphanage gave us a small idea of what it could be, but then…" She put her hands behind her back and swayed back and forth. "I was always a bit jealous of Zell, actually. He had his Ma and Grandpa and that nice little house on Main Street. And that kinda made me mad at Matron and Cid. Like, how come some of us got to have those things while others were shipped off to Garden?"

"Because we were moulded to serve Cid's greater purpose," Seifer said dryly. "He wasn't trying to build a home for SeeD – or us. Just a base, a school, a business. I guess he thought we'd fill in the emotional gap ourselves. Figure it out alone."

"And because there were no opportunities to find a home, we just filled that gap with crazy."

Seifer finally stuck the match and threw it under the kindling. "Speak for yourself."

"Cid was always nice to you, though," Selphie said tentatively, thinking of Matron's unfinished plans to adopt Seifer.

He made a dismissive sound. "Cid tolerated me."

"Because he cared about you. Still does, I bet."

"Well, he has a funny way of showing it. I don't give a shit about him, anyway. Never have, never will. I've got by just fine by myself so far."

Selphie ran a hand over the egg's smooth outer shell. "You sound like Squall."

"Can it, Tilmitt. You and your –" He cut himself off sharply, and pointed at her hand.

Selphie looked down in time to see a tiny crack appear in the egg and inhaled so sharply she almost choked. Her elated scream probably shook the nearby mountain.

"IT'S HAPPENING!"

The egg shifted very slightly and there was a distinctive knock from inside the shell. The crack expanded, and a small chip broke away from the surface.

Selphie dug her fingernails into her cheeks, wheezing and squealing simultaneously. "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, _oh my GOSH,_ what do we do what do we _DO_?"

She glanced at Seifer and found his back turned while he retrieved a pan from the kitchen cupboard and set it on the stove.

"What are you DOING!?" she shrieked. "You're gonna _miss it_!"

"I'm hungry, though."

"Arrgghh you are the densest plum-brained turd I have ever met in my _whole life_!" She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him towards the egg, then hooked her arm through his so he couldn't escape. "It's _hatching_!"

"Eggs tend to do that," he said disinterestedly.

The knocking became more insistent and the chip widened until she spied something yellow and orange squirming beneath the surface. Using the hand not anchored to Seifer, she gently pried away a shard of the shell, whispering, "You can do it, baby! Smash that egg to pieces! Crush it into dust! End its _pitiful existence_!"

The egg began to wobble in earnest and Seifer reached out to keep it steady. There was another knock and this time the crack split the egg almost in two. Seifer carefully let go and with a final blow the chocobo chick pushed free of its shell.

Selphie raked Seifer's arm with her nails. "Oh my goooshhhhh IT'S BORRNNN!"

The chocobo chick lay on its side, exhausted from pushing apart its shell. It was the colour of a sunflower petal and soaked in slime, squinting against the daylight with large, liquid eyes. It was larger than a house cat, with a head way too large for its little body and talons the size of Selphie's hands.

"Ugly," Seifer said.

Selphie screeched at him, then crept forward and teased away the last of the shell sticking to its slimy down. It squirmed on its belly, clacking its beak, then flopped sideways and almost fell off the table. Selphie hurriedly moved its nest and all the lamps onto the floor and hemmed it with cushions.

Seifer watched them with his hands on his hips. "What the hell do we do with it now?"

"I'm gonna go to Esthar to buy some bird seed and greens," she told him.

He raised an eyebrow. "You're serious about looking after this thing?"

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"Give it to a chocobo farm so it can be reared by people who know what they're doing."

Selphie pouted at the sense of this. "Hmm. Yeah. Well, we gotta at least wait until its strong enough to walk. Then I'll definitely think about it."

Seifer seemed placated by this and returned to the stove.

Selphie absently ran her fingers through its damp feathers with one hand while she hit the speed dial on her vidphone with the other.

"Rinny? You free? I have something awesome to show you but you have to promise not to scream."


End file.
